Your music, wrapped up with a bow

If you didn’t already know from opening Instagram, Spotify Wrapped, the app’s annual recap of users’ listening habits, is finally here.

What’s new: In addition to the usual top artists, songs, and podcasts listed for each user, Spotify rolled out a couple of new features for 2024.

• Your Music Evolution, which tracks how your music tastes evolved throughout the year, assigning up to three musical phrases for each month (like “beach” or “reggaeton”).
• A shareable AI-generated podcast featuring two AI hosts who tailor their conversation to your top songs, artists, and genres of the year. Spotify partnered with Google to launch the AI podcasts using its NotebookLM note-taking tech.

Who dominated the charts: Taylor Swift was the most-streamed artist for a second straight year, generating 26.6+ billion streams globally. Her April release, The Tortured Poets Department, also claimed the spot for most streamed album.

• Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” snagged the most listens for a song globally in 2024, at 1.6+ billion streams.
• The top podcasts of 2024 were The Joe Rogan Experience and Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy, while the top audiobook went to Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses.

🎁 ‘Tis the season: US consumers across the board are being bombarded with recaps of their years in music, food, books, or even language learning, as more companies seek to cash in on the success of Spotify Wrapped (aka “the Holy Grail of digital advertising”). Copycats include: Duolingo, Mastadon, Netflix, and Reddit.