Spotify Wrapped Offers a Dystopian AI Podcast in Collaboration with Google

Spotify Wrapped is easily one of the best things about the end of the year and it has set off a trend of other apps also treating us to a year-end review. There are always the naysayers who can’t stand seeing other people enjoy something, but for the most part, Spotify Wrapped has only been a positive community event. This time, Spotify Wrapped came with a bonus AI podcast for some users, with AI voices recapping their year in music.

This new Spotify Wrapped AI podcast is available thanks to the company’s recent collaboration with Google and its promise to bring some AI-centric features to users. The AI podcast has been developed using NotebookLM’s unique ability to generate a semi-realistic conversation between AI voices, all from a simple document or note.

Image: Spotify

The Spotify Wrapped AI Podcast Adds Another Touch of Weirdness to the Year

Every year, Spotify presents users with a recap of some of their top listening stats for the year. The specifics change from year to year, but the categories for the top five artists and the top five songs consistently appear every time. In addition, the company throws in a few different categories like top genres or the songs played on repeat, and we usually get to wrap it all up with a curated playlist of our top tracks for the year.

We even get to discover global aggregate streaming data like Artist of the Year (Taylor Swift) or Song of the Year (Espresso). This year, the AI-driven Spotify Wrapped 2024 review left users with a little something extra.

Spotify and Google have spiced things up with the AI podcast this year, but the new feature is only restricted to English users in a few specific regions. Some customers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and Sweden have received the notification for their personalized podcast.

Spotify capitalized on Google’s AI podcast capabilities with the Gemini AI, and this has allowed users to receive their Wrapped list like an audiobook, instead of just the screen-tapping slide show most of us have received all these years. This podcast doesn’t just summarize the stats, it also throws in some compliments and humor to the situation, giving users a chance to share it on social media instead of just resharing a screenshot.

By itself, Google’s AI note-taking tool, NotebookLM, allows users to turn their notes and documents into a podcast where two AI hosts build off of each other’s dialogue to create a podcast episode. This makes the content more fun and consumable for the user. Channeling this technology into Wrapped is a novel idea.

Image: The Spotify Wrapped AI Podcast

Spotify Wrapped’s AI Obsession Faces Criticism

While the AI podcast is interesting, it certainly isn’t what people wanted. Unfortunately for Spotify, none of their AI powered stats and abstract music evolution phases have impressed listeners this year. Soaring too close to the sun and gaining too much popularity always hurts in the long run when expectations far exceed anything a company can pull off.

YouTube Rewind used to enjoy the kind of attention Spotify Wrapped does now, but the excitement eventually died down around it all well. It did not appear that Spotify Wrapped would go down that path this early in the game, however, the team’s excessive reliance on AI bespoke a callous attitude of disinterest that has rubbed users the wrong way.

The art, while not unappealing, has been generic and the playlist doesn’t seem to accurately reflect the user’s listening experience. The Spotify Wrapped AI podcast is not pleasant to listen to, and it’s riddled with small but obvious errors that are jarring reminders that everything is powered by AI.

Changes that Eliminate Everything Users Love About a Service are Never Ideal

Categories that made Spotify Wrapped interesting previously have been ignored this year. Spotify’s way of categorizing music phases this year could have been funny, but the nonsensical terms in the context of all things AI have left users confused and embarrassed about sharing their Spotify Wrapped publicly.

It doesn’t help that users are connecting the Spotify layoffs from earlier in the year with the poor quality of Spotify Wrapped, further putting a damper on the excitement around the big reveal. In the larger scheme of things, the AI-driven Spotify Wrapped drop for 2024 may not make a big difference to the company as users will continue to use the app regardless of how they felt about their music yearbook this year.

However, if Spotify plans to continue embracing AI, it will have to do so in a way that appeals to consumers, because all of its previous attempts to market AI have been unsuccessful so far. And hey, while Spotify is at it, HiFi audio would be a great addition to the platform, which is one feature that users have demanded for a long while now.