Spotify Wrapped has officially arrived. All year, we listen to music, and Spotify remembers everything. It meticulously tracks your favorite songs, artists and other music trends throughout the year and gives you fun images to share on social media so everyone knows about your obsession.
But this year, Wrapped has a new trick up its sleeve — an AI-generated podcast that analyzes your music tastes. A male and female AI voice, powered by NotebookLM, pours over your Wrapped and talks about the bands and songs you listened to most.
As you might expect, it's weird. Hearing two people who sound almost human talking about how you spent the last year feels different from looking at neatly animated videos on the traditional Wrapped.
Thankfully, the podcast is short: mine was just over three minutes (here's a link if you want to hear it talk about my music), about the same amount of time it'll take you to go through the traditional Spotify Wrapped package. And that's because the AI is basically repeating everything you already read, but in a more conversational tone.
I was hoping for some analysis that wasn't in the main feature. Still, with it being essentially the same, I don't get why this feature exists outside of Spotify wanting to say it included some AI features (as every company seems to be doing right now).
Outside of the information and analysis not being new, the conversation felt just fake enough to take me out of it. As soon as the female AI voice inserted odd pauses into Dance Gavin Dance, my number one artist of 2024, it took me out of it.
While it's a neat feature for Spotify to include that makes Wrapped stand out, it doesn't feel like the AI podcast is ready for prime time yet. With the rapid advancements in AI tech, I expect it to be much better next year, assuming it sticks around.
In the meantime, I'll stick to the traditional Wrapped instead of listening to almost human AI bots talk about my love of Deathcore, Post-hardcore and other music.
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