How to fix Spotify Wrapped

Key Takeaways

Spotify Wrapped reveals listening preferences annually, showcasing music, podcasts, and audiobooks.
Use Private Sessions to control what influences your Spotify Wrapped to align it with your preferences.
Spotify’s Made For playlists suggest similar artists and songs, helping maintain your music lane.

It’s that time of year again. The time when everybody is sharing what songs they listened to nonstop all year. The time when you get a glimpse into your friends’ and loved ones’ musical preferences to see what they’re really listening to. Sure, they can show you in the car when they have the aux cord. But what are they listening to while working or studying or relaxing? Spotify Wrapped can tell you their secrets.

Spotify Wrapped is the annual bow that Spotify puts on the present, called a year, as it shows you how much time people spent listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks on its platform each year. This also means that you’re bound to see people sharing their favorite songs, artists, podcasts, and more on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and more. Every year, Spotify Wrapped goes bigger with its reveal and it’s something that fans and users of the platform look forward. You are even able to compare what you listened to this year to previous years to see how your listening preferences have changed.

But did you look at your Spotify Wrapped this year and think, “I’m embarrassed to show anyone this?” Did your algorithm get all messed up because you listened to 100 hours of The Wiggles to appease your screaming toddler? Was The Wheels on the Bus your most listened to song? If you’re someone who uses Spotify to play white noise while you sleep, do people need to know your most played track was just jungle sounds? If you came away underwhelmed with your Spotify Wrapped, there are ways to plan ahead for next year to avoid thsi same feeling. Here’s how to change your Spotify Wrapped for the next year.

Be first to get your Spotify Wrapped with this tip

Spotify Wrapped is nearly here, and there is an easy way to make sure you get it the moment it drops.

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How does Spotify Wrapped work?

How much data is pulls may surprise you

Spotify Wrapped takes your listening preferences for any given year and tabulates them all into a fun, end-of-year presentation for you. It goes through your favorite genres, artists, albums, podcasts, and more to provide you with an all-encompassing look at your year in music. At least, that’s what Spotify wants you to think. The truth is: your last few weeks of the year don’t matter at all. What matters are the first 10-plus months.

Spotify won’t confirm an actual date, but it does cut off the data tracking for Spotify Wrapped sometime in November in order to be able to release everyone’s Spotify Wrapped at the beginning of December. So, even if you listen to one song 100 times in November, it may not show up in your list. Another thing that you may have noticed is that your “most recent” songs are different if you are listening on a computer compared to your phone. While Spotify is tracking all of your listening habits, it will only save the history on the device you’re using. You can sync across devices using Spotify Connect, which lets users cast Spotify to enabled devices. That is one of a few helpful tips to better sync your Spotify Wrapped going forward.

I’m obsessed with Spotify’s new mini-Wrapped feature

Spotify has introduced a new Recents page to the app that shows you what you’ve listened to in the past 90 days.

What are Private sessions?

These can keep your algorithm true

Spotify

In order to minimize your kids’ songs creeping into your Spotify Wrapped next year or eliminating the chance that anything you’re ashamed to be listening to does, you can use Private sessions. Private sessions is a feature on Spotify that lets you listen to whatever you want without having Spotify track it for your history. Think of it as a Private browser tab for your Spotify. Don’t want people to know you listen to that Grey’s Anatomy recap podcast every week? They won’t if you listen on a Private session.

It’s simple to authorize a Private session if you’re using a phone or your computer. It is also a different process for phones versus computers. For anyone using the desktop app:

Open Spotify.
In the top right corner, select your profile picture.
The third option down is Private session.

A lock symbol will show up next to your profile picture indicating that you are listening in a Private session. Repeating the same process and clicking on it again will take you off a Private Session. For a phone, you need to:

Open Spotify.
In the top left corner, select your profile picture.
Scroll down and click on Privacy and social.
Toggle on the first button which is Private session.

The way that you know you’re in a Private session on mobile is that at the very bottom of the screen, it will say Private session. You can repeat these steps to come out of the session.

Private session automatically toggles off after six hours.

What are Made For playlists?

Keep yourself in your favorite lane

For those that are proud of what they listen to, you probably want to listen to more of the same. That’s where Spotify’s algorithms come into play. They can suggest other artists or songs that are similar to what you have listened to in the past and lay them all out in curated playlists. Not only does Spotify offer you a Daily Mix, which is a playlist made up of either songs you’ve liked in the past or songs from artists you’ve liked in the past, but it offers you six of them. Each one is 50 songs, giving you 300 songs to listen to each day. The more you listen to these, the more you are to guarantee that artists you like end up in your Spotify Wrapped.

There is also a Discover Weekly playlist that is made for every Spotify user that delivers artists and songs that you may not know, but Spotify thinks you’ll like. Discover Weekly may have artists that you have listened to, but songs that you haven’t heard yet. This is also filled with new and up-and-coming artists who land in a genre you’ve enjoyed in the past. It changes every week as well. Release Radar highlights new songs from artists you follow and more of the latest songs released that week from genres you’ve enjoyed. This comes out every Friday.

An iPhone with Spotify open with a pair of headphones plugged in

Should Spotify let us customize more ‘specific’ Wrapped data insights?

Spotify wrapped season is upon us — just a week ago, Spotify stopped collecting the data it’s going to use to give us our “Wrapped.” As someone who knows no bounds when it comes to genre, my Wrapped has never made it onto social media, no matter how cute or cool the pre-populated graphics Spotify makes for me are. Last year, the background music (so Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3) I play at work dominated my top song chart. Have I ever played that game? Nope. To make matters more confusing, the following four songs were by Zach Bryan, Lindsey Stirling, The Band CAMINO, and John Summit. Sometimes, I want to join the droves of people that are posting their (somewhat) consistent music tastes to their social platforms. But, I wish I could get more narrow reports from Spotify — such as “Kelsey’s 2024 Country Wrapped” or even “Kelsey’s 2024 Instrumental Wrapped.” Comparing Bailey Zimmerman to Audiomachine isn’t even comparing apples to oranges — it’s pitting zebras against dolphins. Do y

Use Spotify’s AI DJ

It communicates with you as you’re listening

If you’re keeping up with your Private sessions, you can trust Spotify to work within its algorithms to suggest songs for you that you’ll like, not what you’re listening to in those Private sessions. A newer feature that is Spotify’s AI DJ, which can automatically come up with songs for you to listen to. Rather than a physical playlist, it’s like you’re listening to your own personal radio station. The Spotify AI DJ curates some of your favorite songs into a radio station playlist, so you can’t see what the next song is.

This keeps you in the zone and not searching for a specific song while bringing back some songs you haven’t listened to in a long time. This feature is meant to take the demand of finding music out of your hands. But, if the DJ plays a song that you don’t like, there is a button at the bottom of the screen that you can click and the DJ will change the song and the vibe. It will switch genres for you and tell you that it is switching things up. The DJ feature makes it easy to discover new songs without actually having to search for them. It is unclear how much Spotify aims to utilize this feature going forward but it is an interesting addition.