As the year draws to a close, anticipation begins to build—from holiday pastries to Christmas songs, everyone is excited about something. With the holidays around the corner, retail stores have also shared this anticipation, developing items based on the holidays to gain profit. And many other industries including social media companies have also followed a similar trend of gaining profit. Towards the end of the year, we love to reflect on the things we’ve consumed and social media apps have used this to their advantage. Tiktok has incorporated a feature to gain user acquisition by creating a summary of Tiktok activity, Letterboxd has created something similar lines, which is summarizing a user’s movie activity. But it can be argued that many social media users are most hyped about the Spotify Wrapped feature.
Spotify Wrapped is a feature in Spotify that provides a deeper look on what a user has consumed over the year including a recap of Most Listened Songs, podcasts, and albums. Over the years, AI has taken over the feature and many are not too hyped about it. Last year’s Spotify Wrapped in 2024, the vibes were off—Spotify faced backlash for losing authenticity by relying too heavily on AI. In 2024, users were not provided top music genres, songs, and podcasts. Instead, users were given a “Music Evolution” which showed a selection of creatively titled musical micro-genres. Fear of repeating the same mistake fills many listeners with doubt as they anticipate the release dates. Following release dates, this year’s 2025 has had many speculations on when the feature is to be released, with many saying that this year may follow a particular pattern, which follows the release in late November or early December. The past following release dates for Spotify Wrapped are:
2024: December 4.
2023: November 29.
2022: November 30.
2021: December 1.
2020: December 1.
2019: December 5.
With everyone filled with anticipation, social media users have been blooming with excitement, many hoping that this year’s Spotify Wrapped and music history will not disappoint. With the pattern of release dates, it is more likely to expect the release around December. Spotify does use social media attention to garner visits to their app, which can delay the release but in the meantime, it is only possible to guess, as Spotify remains tight-lipped about the upcoming feature.