Music tells the story of our lives – and trusty old Last.fm does it better than gaudy Spotify Wrapped

The music tracking site runs a reduced service these days, but still offers an alternative to AI-generated slideshows and made-up genres that’s useful – and genuinely revealing

Like many music fans with a conscience, I use Spotify begrudgingly. I need to listen to a vast amount of music for work; I want to listen to a vast amount of music for fun, and I would have to forgo groceries if I attempted to buy it all. Still, I resent its financial distribution model to artists: my £11.99 a month isn’t divided between the musicians I actually listen to, but proportionally related to their popularity across the platform, meaning Ed Sheeran is getting significantly more of my money than Mabe Fratti. Spotify hosts music almost certainly made by fake artists or AI; playlists are prioritised over albums; there was the whole Joe Rogan thing that made Joni Mitchell and Neil Young quit the platform for a year.

Perhaps counterintuitively, I have less ire for Spotify Wrapped, the packaging of a user’s year in listening that Spotify revamps annually with silly little made-up genre names (pink Pilates princess strut pop?) and flattering stats about being in the top 0.5% of any given act’s listeners. It unarguably puts a tidy bow on Spotify’s poor artist remuneration – as well as big-tech creep – and is nothing more than a giant marketing push that its users carry out for free. But the main gripe against it this year is the company’s frank use of AI – as if previous years’ instalments were as lovingly curated as a handmade mix CD. In a comment piece for the New Yorker titled “The hollow allure of Spotify Wrapped”, critic Brady Brickner-Wood writes: “If we can’t trust the apps to tell us a meaningful story about our art consumption, how will anyone, including ourselves, ever discover the idiosyncratic composition of our inner lives?”