It’s taken five years for Apple Music to nail Replay, but in 2024 it finally happened
You either love or loathe it, no? That 48 hours when every social media portal you consult spits out garish posts from friends, colleagues, your 2016-2019 chiropractor and your tech-savvy aunt in Blyth, all of whom are ready to solemnly (silently, reverently) convey the depths of their very souls to you now. This is their moment. And they do this by disclosing that Mudvayne and Cradle of Filth were their top-played artists of the year.
Are we supposed to respond in kind to this unsolicited (and oft unwanted) information? Are we meant to feel emphatically drawn to their tastes and monosyllabic comments (‘typical’, ‘so this’ and such) following these revelations? Oh, I know why Spotify Wrapped became such a hit: people love to be told about themselves (see also, 23andMe) but honestly, I’ve never liked any of it – until now.
Because this is the year Replay killed it, isn’t it? This is the year the Cupertino giant bulldozed the quaint, skittishly-organised Apple cart of CDs in your phone and actually got granular on your timely listening habits. This is the year Apple went ‘right, let’s give ’em the ultimate play-by-plays, in the app, to their emails and in fact everywhere we can post it. Let’s deliver a video and multiple charts featuring their most-loved genres. Let’s give ’em months, minutes, commentaries, the lot’.
This year, nobody’s sharing that 2023 gif – you know the one: beautiful airbrushed RuPaul image on the left labelled ‘Spotify Wrapped’; cheap RuPaul-could-be-Rick-James Christmas bauble on the right, labelled ‘Apple Music Replay’.So, Spotify Wrapped 2024 failed – and all (human) eyes are turning to AI
I’m not alone in thinking Spotify Wrapped was an epic fail this year (not helped by the fact that some users said Wrapped wasn’t working at all initially). No, our very own Rowan Davies penned his disappointment on this year’s offering.
But it’s the Reddit thread entitled ‘Not gonna lie, this years Replay is 100x better than Wrapped. Spotify delivered a barebones experience that offered no payoff’ that really resonated with me personally. Why did Apple Music come into its own in 2024, while Spotify failed? Yes, Apple Music beat Spotify to the punch this year, but that’s not the issue.
