After sparking backlash over its use of AI in final 12 months’s Wrapped, Spotify is returning to a extra human-centered method for the 2025 version.
Today (Dec. 3), Spotify unveiled the eleventh iteration of Wrapped, its annual evaluation of customers’ listening habits. This 12 months’s marketing campaign blends basic options with new additions, together with a retro-inspired design, a refreshed person expertise, and immersive fan locations all over the world.
Over the previous decade, Wrapped has developed right into a extremely anticipated cultural occasion and Spotify’s greatest advertising second of the 12 months.
Last 12 months, nevertheless, the corporate confronted criticism from customers for leaning too closely on generative AI and eradicating some in style components, like prime genres, from the expertise.
This time round, “We were aware of the AI criticism and went the other way,” Jeremy Wirth, Spotify’s world head of inventive, instructed ADWEEK.
That shift included revamping Wrapped’s visible identification from what Wirth described as beforehand “bright, super slick, and digital” right into a design impressed by the best way folks used to share music earlier than streaming: the mix-tape tradition of the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s.
“We wanted something that felt more handmade and a bit more messy by design… to feel fresh and human,” Wirth stated.
Spotify additionally up to date the person expertise with new options that seize folks’s personalised listening habits, together with listening age, prime albums, a prime music quiz, a fan leaderboard that ranks customers amongst prime artists’ listeners worldwide, and Clubs that signify communities of listening types.
The solely AI-powered a part of Wrapped is the listening archive, which presents personalised snapshots of customers’ most memorable streaming days.
A significant new addition is Wrapped Party, an interactive characteristic that lets hosts invite as much as 9 mates to match listening stats through a stay competitors.
