spotify wrapped is out!!

so, as is annual tradition, spotify has released their SPOTIFY WRAPPED- a summary of a given user's most-streamed artists, songs, and genres throughout the year. this event is always hyped up by spotify users all over the world, sharing their own statistics on every platform they can. additionally, the highest percentage of an artist's listeners get a special personalized message thanking them for streaming their music. spotify wrapped has become so well-loved that many other music streaming platforms have inplemented a similar feature. but this year, the masses don't seem to care about spotify wrapped at all. 

despite being one of the most popular music platforms of all time, spotify has had criticism in the past. many people complained about how the platform is basically unusable without a paid premium subscription- you cant listen to the songs you want, you hear constant advertisements, the app forces unwanted songs into your playlists, and much more. additionally, spotify continues to raise the price for their premium service, while all the while they dont properly pay artists for their work. it's also worth noting that when you first make an account, you basically have the same abilities as a premium user for the first month or so, likely to convince users to buy premium to keep those abilities. additional controversy regarding the platform arose in 2024, when it was revealed that the CEO supports Israel (and most likely uses the money he gets from spotify to fund the genocide Israel is carrying out). this lead many people to boycott spotify to support Palestine, or stream songs on the platform that were by artists in support of Palestine. 

additional controversy arose in july of 2025, with an event this website is well-familiar with- the UK Online Safety Act. as i'm sure we all remember, the UK passed a law enforcing social media platforms to enforce age identification for all users, to ensure the safety of children online. because of this act, spotift was made to force UK users to show legal identification (or a photo of themselves) to prove they were old enough to use the platform. while this was mainly the UK government's doing, they implemented a similar policy for the US shortly afterwards in August- with no pressure from America's government at all. many people were outraged by this feature, as there's no need to force people to show legal identification on a website that can easily get hacked for the sake of online safety. if anything, spotify and other platforms with similar guidelines should be reminding parents to monitor what their kids are doing online, instead of doing so for those parents- which i covered in this blog a few months back. however, the obvious elephant in the room is that this was never about online safety, and always about online surveillance. while it isn't the main topic of this entry, the biggest reason tiktok has been on the verge of being banned in the united states is due to the fact that american companies now have less access to our data- the app is designed to be attention grabbing and captivating, and that clearly worked. less people were using american platforms in favor of tiktok, and that means fewer american platforms have access to the data of american citizens. with tiktok being in a constant limbo state of "might get banned in a few months, might get the ban pushed back again," a lot of americans are trying to diversify their content- and that's when a lot of american platforms started enforcing these new "security measures" under the guise of online safety. this was also around the time i stopped using the app altogether, and i haven't redownloaded it since.

lastly, most spotify users who have premium havent experienced this, but recently, the platform has been advertising propaganda for I.C.E., which many people are upset with. unlike the first two major things i mentioned, this was a situation where you were pretty much screwed either way. either you have premium and dont have to listen to the ads, but have to live with the fact that your money is likely being used to fund I.C.E., or you dont have premium and are forced to listen to the ads every time you use the platform. a lot of users stopped using the platform after this, because anyone with a passing grade in US history can tell you that the country literally would not be the way it is today without immigration. this combined with the previous reason that people are switching up on spotify is not a good sign of things going forwards- 

all in all, people are not happy with spotify at the moment, and those are some of the reasons. this isnt meant to be hate towards anyone who is excited for their spotify wrapped, nor do i support or endorse anyone who's hating on those who people. you're entitled to your opinion, but if you don't know how to be respectful about that opinion, there's obviously gonna be consequences.

 if you're interested in other ways to listen to music, i have a tutorial on burning CDs, and you can support artists directly on Bandcamp :)