Some listeners say their Wrapped doesn’t resemble their year at all, and the evidence is piling up.
Spotify Wrapped used to feel like a fun little award show for your own taste. But in 2025, many fans opened it and saw something closer to AI spam. Unknown “artists” filled their top spots, real favorites went missing, and some users said the numbers looked bought and paid for.
Third-party tracking apps also often showed a completely different picture, so people started asking who Wrapped is really for. Here’s a closer look at the complaints and what might be driving them.
“My Wrapped Is Literally Wrong”
One Reddit user captured the frustration bluntly in a comment on r/Vent:
On Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram, the same complaints keep popping up. One r/spotifywrapped user said their top album was suddenly the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack, even though they only throw on instrumental music sometimes while working.
Another noticed that artists with under 1,000 monthly streams had vanished from their Wrapped entirely, replaced by names they barely recognized.
Other users described even stranger patterns. TrumpetEater3139 listened to a track only three times but saw it sit on their On Repeat playlist for months. Normal-Earth-9700 reported three “AI slop artists” in their top positions despite using Spotify’s “do not play this artist” option on all of them. Some found artists they’d never heard of in their results.
Not everyone hated Wrapped this year, though. One user, for instance, called the 2025 version “the best one yet.” But the praise didn’t stand a chance against the backlash.
Why Wrapped So Often Feels Wrong (Even When It Isn’t)
According to experts at SeatPick, several factors can make Wrapped feel incorrect even when the system works as intended:
- The mid-November cut-off. Spotify doesn’t publish an exact date, but most breakdowns suggest tracking stops around the middle of the month, so anything you binge after that probably never makes it into Wrapped.
- Short songs punch above their weight. A stream counts after 30 seconds. That means a 90-second hyperpop track you loop five times can beat an eight-minute prog song you play once, even if the prog track ate most of your listening time.
- Algorithm playlists still count. Plays from Discover Weekly, Release Radar, or Daily Mixes all feed into your stats, even when you never chose those songs yourself.
- Background listening takes over. Lo-fi study playlists, sleep sounds, or your smart speaker on autoplay can rack up more hours than the music you actually remember picking.
- Spiked listening skews results: A two-week phase with one artist is often enough to shove them into your top five, even if you barely touch them for the rest of the year.
Per Gilad Zilberman, CEO at SeatPick, Wrapped functions as a curated highlight reel rather than a forensic report.
Bugs, AI Issues, and the 2024 Hangover
Legitimate reasons aside, technical glitches appeared in various forms. Some users claimed their On Repeat playlists froze for months. Meanwhile, others found top songs confirmed by Stats.fm that didn’t appear anywhere in Wrapped.
Wrapped 2024 relied heavily on AI and was widely mocked for its hallucinated artists and songs. An AI-generated podcast also narrated users’ listening habits in ways many called irrelevant.
At the same time, beloved features like top genres disappeared, and the visuals flattened into dull blocks. Critics tied the rollout to layoffs, arguing the company rushed AI features without adequate testing.
In 2025, Spotify tried to win listeners back with new features. They adopted a retro ’90s mixtape theme and restored familiar stats. This year also introduced features like listening age, fan leaderboards, and the group-friendly Wrapped Party.
But because last year’s AI-heavy Wrapped already damaged people’s trust, this year’s glitches and odd stats look even worse.
What’s clear is that Wrapped has evolved beyond a year-end summary. For many, it’s a public declaration of taste. In the age of social media, that’s the same as identity, so a perceived betrayal hits deeper.