Spotify Wrapped made me miss the radio this year

I’ve never been a big fan of the radio. In fact, I’ve had Spotify Premium for years to avoid listening to commercials and lame jokes to start my day — ironic, given the state of most podcasts. And yet, there’s something about the 2024 edition of Spotify Wrapped that made me — or at least a small part of me — miss the feeling of listening to the radio. It brought back some unpredictability that I’d lost while carefully curating playlist after playlist, and it might have sold me on Spotify’s use of AI. Here’s why.

Before you panic and think that Spotify has suddenly rebuilt Wrapped from the ground up, fear not. Everything you’re used to is still there, with the songs, artists, and podcasts you binge-listened to presented in the form of vibrant, colorful lists. You can still share any slides from the story-like recap of stats, whether you’re proud of Spotify’s increasingly niche genre names or not.

I’m glad Spotify hasn’t rewritten the basics. I still have a slight sense of competition when it comes to out-listening my friends, and I’m always curious to see who among them is secretly a Swiftie (just kidding, the Swifties are an obvious bunch). I do, however, like that Spotify is finally starting to add to Wrapped, treating it almost like a preview of features that might launch over the coming year. In 2023, that meant the debut of Spotify’s AI-powered DJ and editorial playlists, but this year, it means an all-new way to dive into your Wrapped recap.

Like every suburban white guy with money for a microphone, Spotify decided to start a podcast. Well, it decided to use its existing partnership with Google to leverage Notebook LM into creating an AI-generated podcast about your jams from the year — not quite the same. Rather than rambling about mostly nothing, Spotify’s Wrapped AI Podcast sticks closely to your overall listening habits, sprinkling in a few fun facts about an artist or a song.

In my case, that meant I mostly knew what was coming — after all, I clicked through my Wrapped recap as soon as I woke up, just like a kid on Christmas morning. I knew who my top artists were and what my top songs were, so all I had to do was wait and see what Spotify’s nameless hosts had to say.

Right off the bat, they sound impressively human. Actually, the male and female hosts (you get one of each) sound a lot like the voices that Google developed for Gemini Live, which is to say that they sound almost eerily natural. As expected, they have good banter that keeps the five-minute chat moving along rather than getting hung up on the smallest of stories like a human podcast would. It felt like they jumped effectively from artist to song to genre, taking up a little more time than the slide-based Wrapped recap but not harping on any one section for too long.

However, I did notice a few places where the AI-generated hosts felt a little bit less than natural — mainly when it came to repeated topics. Although they could link my top song (Bees by The Ballroom Thieves) to my top artist (The Killers) based on their indie rock roots, the hosts had more trouble talking about my changing habits throughout the year. In January, I listened to a fair bit of bleak, western-inspired music from artists including Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and then progressed to… cowboy-inspired music in April from artists including… you guessed it, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

Honestly, though, there were enough different artists between the two sections that the podcast could play up the differences, but I was surprised not to see Notebook LM focus on consistency. Rather than offer fun facts about the artists that changed, I would have expected human hosts to provide facts and insights about the continuity of my listening, recognizing that I listen to my favorite artists throughout the year rather than all at once.

Oh, and if you were curious, there’s no content warning attached to the Wrapped AI Podcast. So, if you listened to a song with an explicit title as one of your top five, the hosts might mention it by name, but only because that’s how they were trained. I can’t say that happened to me (it didn’t), but I also can’t say I would have been offended if it had. After all, it’s based on each user’s listening habits, so if you put profanity in, you might get profanity back out.

While the AI-generated podcast might have been Spotify’s new, exciting feature for Wrapped this year, it actually inspired me to dip into an older one: The AI-powered DJ X. Spotify introduced its playlist-hosting companion at the end of 2023, and I just never really gave it the time of day. I trusted myself to find the music I liked, and I figured that my Daylist or other genre mixes would trickle new music into my ears at a reliable enough rate.

Now, though, I’m curious enough about how Spotify approaches its AI recommendations, so I’ve been listening to DJ X with fresh ears. I know that DJ X is usually meant to provide the listener with mostly new music, sprinkling in a few favorites to ensure he keeps your attention, but this time of year is different. Around Wrapped, DJ X takes a longer, harder look at what you’ve been playing throughout the year and offers similar insights to the new podcast hosts to help deepen your connection with your favorite songs. He’s like a radio host but focused on you rather than the young kids who still stay close to the top 40 hits (unless that’s also you).

Awkwardly, DJ X also apparently lets you know how much time you spent listening to his recommendations and thoughts throughout the year, which for me meant a reminder that I had not, in fact, used his services in 2024. There’s always time to change, though, especially now that I know you can tap the small blue DJ button in the corner of the Spotify interface any time you want to switch up his recommendations. After all, you can’t view a song queue on the radio, so why should you be able to tell DJ X what you want to hear?

That might be precisely what made me miss the radio after digging into my Spotify Wrapped 2024 recap — the lack of control. I’ve spent so much time throughout the year trying to steer my Spotify algorithm into exactly what I want to hear that I’ve missed out on new music that probably fits right into my listening taste. I’ve been so wrapped up in pushing artists (hello, Mt. Joy and Maggie Rogers) into my Daylist and pushing others (sorry, Stan Rogers) out of it that I’ve forgotten to trust Spotify and let it introduce me to new music.

I’m not one for resolutions, but maybe it’s time to reconsider my listening habits for 2025.