Spotify has launched its feverishly-anticipated Wrapped 2020, which brings together your most-played tracks of the last year, as well as interactive quizzes, overall trends and total number of minutes listening within the app. In response to Wrapped, which allows Spotify users to share their statistics on social media, users have mocked Apple Music – the second most-popular music streaming service worldwide – for not benefiting from the same feature.
Spotify users have flooded social media with hilarious images and responses to mock those on Apple Music. Spotify currently boasts a staggering 320 million monthly active users, including 144 million paid subscribers.
For comparison, Apple Music is believed to be around 68 million subscribers (the company hasn’t publicly updated investors on the number of paid subscribers since it hit 60 million last year). Amazon Music now counts 55 million subscribers, although it’s worth noting that this includes those who listen using the free tier included with the Amazon Prime membership as well as those who pay for unlimited access via a standalone Amazon Music subscription.
Of those, only Spotify offers a detailed journey through listeners’ trends, amount of time spent listening to certain tracks, most-streamed podcasts, and more. Something that Spotify are only too keen to point out.
However, those who subscribe to Apple Music do have some options when it comes to competing with Wrapped.
First up, they’re able to use Spotify Wrapped. Yes, one of the new features included with immensely-popular feature this year is the ability for those who don’t subscribe to Spotify to check their listening trends. As Spotify details in a company blog post about the change, “for the first time ever, we’re opening up the world of Wrapped to non-users. (How’s that for fighting FOMO?) Even if you’re not a Spotify subscriber, you can still check out the latest in Spotify’s global listening trends. Whether you’re looking into the most streamed podcast or the decade the world listened to the most, non-users can now join the conversation that wraps up our year in streaming.”
Like those who listen using the desktop app, non-Spotify users will need to visit the Spotify.com/Wrapped website to find the latest global statistics. Of course, if they have a free Spotify account used to stream music on smart speakers like the Google Nest, Amazon Echo and others …there will be some personalised statistics to find too.
Unfortunately, since these users aren’t predominantly streaming their latest obsessions, nostalgic hits and favourite albums via the Spotify app, the music streaming service won’t be able to put together the personalised playlists. Spotify Wrapped 2020 has also expanded the number of playlists available to its users. As well as the Your Top Songs playlist, which has been around for the last three years, there’s also Missed Hits and a Wrapped discovery playlist where the music streaming service recommends popular similar 2020 releases that users might’ve missed, but should align with their tastes. Finally, listeners in the UK and Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada can dig deeper into some of their top artists of the last 12 months using the On Record playlist, a mixed media experience that highlights your top 2020 artists.
While Apple Music can’t quite compete with that, the service, which charges the same £9.99 monthly subscription fee as Spotify to access its library of tracks, albums, playlists and more, does have a personalised playlist that summarises the last year.
Dubbed Music Replay, the music service will create a playlist of everything that has been booming through your headphones this past year. Apple Music will bundle together a playlist of 100 of your most played songs from the last 12 months – a great chance to rediscover some new favourites that you might’ve forgotten over the months. Apple launched its Replay 2020 playlist back in January – allowing users to add it to their library and slowly see it evolve and build throughout the year as their tastes and most-played tracks fluctuated.
However, if it’s not already in your library, Apple Music users can head to the dedicated Apple Music Replay website to add the playlist. This website, like Spotify Wrapped, also offers some in-depth statistics about your music library, including the albums that you’ve listened to the most over the last year, new artists that you’ve discovered in 2020, and other insights into your streaming habits.
Interestingly, Apple actually improves on some of what we’ve seen from Spotify Wrapped. Apple acknowledges that we’ve got almost a month to go before 2020 comes around the bend – so your Apple Music Replay 2019 playlist will update itself behind-the-scenes with any new artists or albums that start dominating your listening habits in the next few weeks. That’s something that Spotify doesn’t cater for. Instead, your playlist is typically locked with data pulled from your library between January and late October.
That said, Apple doesn’t offer anywhere close to the same level of insight found with Wrapped 2020. However, there are some third-party apps that can offer an almost scientific level of depth in the statistics around your listening habits, favourite artists, time spent listening to a certain album, number of times you’ve skipped a certain song, the list goes on and on… One such option for iPhone owners is Snd.Wave, which is free to download but locks some advanced features behind an in-app purchase.
Spotify Wrapped 2020 also includes interactive quizzes where users can guess their most-played artists …something Apple Music subscribers can only dream of. Still, maybe next year, eh?