As the brand new yr approaches, it is exhausting to not mirror on how we spent our time over the previous twelve months. It is even simpler to look again with issues like Spotify Wrapped giving us a snapshot of our previous yr in sound. However, for some, their musical retrospectives did not fairly meet expectations. As graphics of listeners’ high songs and artists flooded Instagram, involved posts additionally unfold throughout Reddit, with customers highlighting potential inaccuracies of their end-of-year rundown. Some shared that their high artists included bands they could not title a single tune by, whereas others’ high style lists have been suffering from unfamiliar, and in some instances, unfavorable, kinds. Naturally, these potential inaccuracies raised alarm bells.
I had the same creeping suspicion throughout final yr’s Wrapped season, after a few years of surprises, prompting me to take issues into my very own fingers. So, I tracked my streaming habits for a complete yr. Come December, my suspicions have been confirmed: my listening stats did not match my Spotify Wrapped. The truth is, my high songs confirmed a vastly totally different order, with totally different songs making it to the highest 5.
Some variations between the 2 platforms’ data have been delicate. A few songs switched locations right here and there, with my high tune on Spotify hovering round second place. Different variations have been extra noticeable; with entire albums I spent a whole lot of time with lacking totally. What actually struck me, although, was that there was no single date in November — the cut-off level for Wrapped — the place my high songs precisely matched what Wrapped gave me. Very like many different music fanatics, this led me to query not solely Wrapped’s accuracy, but in addition its validity.
How I measured my streaming habits
On January 1st, 2025, I arrange a recent Final FM account to begin gathering knowledge from my Spotify streams. Then, I listened as I normally would. Towards the tip of the yr, when my Spotify Wrapped dropped, I in contrast it towards the information logged by Final FM all year long. I used to be cautious to not exclude something from my style profile, and did not use any personal listening classes, so the information gathered was as full and consultant of my listening as potential.
I solely tracked my listening by means of my very own Spotify account with Final FM to assist be sure my comparability to Wrapped was as honest as potential. Meaning the time I spent listening to LPs, Bandcamp, the radio, or by way of my accomplice’s profile within the automotive wasn’t counted. This helped me to see if my shock actually was simply me being duped by listening to a file 100 instances and never seeing it mirrored in my Wrapped.
I additionally performed round with the time period coated by Final FM to try to seize the Wrapped cut-off level as intently as potential. Spotify stopped gathering wrapped knowledge in mid-November, however no particular date was publicized, so I needed to estimate. Per the BBC, the cut-off level in 2024 was November fifteenth, so I used that as a jumping-off level and experimented with different dates to see if it made a distinction.
What’s Final FM?
Final FM is principally monitoring software program that mechanically data your listening habits. It is a easy, old-internet-style platform that creates a comparatively complete file of the music you hearken to by means of something you have built-in with it. It could actually scrobble music you stream, hearken to by way of media gamers, and extra. Scrobbling, by the best way,is when Final FM data knowledge out of your listening habits. For instance, it makes a be aware of what tune you listened to and when. You may even use particular software program like OpenScrobbler to manually scrobble tracks you heard whereas streaming on a distinct platform.
Final FM noticed its peak across the 2010s after I was principally listening to music by way of iTunes. I left the platform after some time as a result of it appeared to overlook a whole lot of knowledge. I am blissful to report is has tailored to streaming companies properly and, due to that, it has vasty improved.
It is not essentially the most well-known platform as of late, it nonetheless has a fairly sized person base. That is simple to inform from the Final FM charts, with high artists like BTS, Rihanna, Chappell Roan, and The Weeknd every sweeping up multi-million listeners figures. The urge for food for the platform seemingly stems from the identical urge we’ve to sift by means of our Wrapped: it provides us the possibility to get a deeper understanding of how we behave, and what we like. Plus, with Final FM, you’ll be able to see your Spotify stats everytime you really feel prefer it.
Spotify’s metrics and strategies may skew your knowledge
Spotify shared its strategies for measuring and analyzing Wrapped, and what guardrails they put in place to make the magic occur. One rule is that songs should be streamed for a minimum of 30 seconds to depend. In the meantime, sure forms of tracks are filtered out altogether, with “background sounds and white noise” given as examples. In some methods, this is sensible. You do not need your nightly noise machine bungling your Wrapped stats. Nonetheless, it is not clear precisely what’s impacted by this, which means it is potential that genres like ambient or harsh noise might be unfairly disqualified from Wrapped. We additionally know that Wrapped is not the perfect at dictating style, so tracks might be swept away inaccurately.
Spotify additionally stops gathering Wrapped knowledge in November. It is more likely to cease vacation tunes from creeping in and to offer time for quantity crunching. However, that also means round six weeks of listening are misplaced annually. Personally, I do not hearken to a lot Christmas music, and I would a lot favor Vince Guaraldi entering into my Wrapped over shedding my listening habits from greater than 1/twelfth of the yr. How else am I going to recollect what I loop whereas working by means of the year-end crunch? Plus, something excluded out of your style profile is already Wrapped-exempt, so vacation music may simply be tagged like that.
Whereas these guardrails are meant to enhance person expertise, all of them result in a major consequence, and it is not simply that your Wrapped knowledge is not fully numerically correct. It is also that this cherry-picked knowledge may not be consultant of your true listening habits. Say that you just do hearken to a whole lot of espresso store sounds, or Final Christmas on repeat — disregarding that may imply your conduct is not being precisely represented.
Spotify’s album stats are off
Just a few areas stood out when wanting by means of my Wrapped and Final FM knowledge, however maybe essentially the most obvious was the highest album stats. My high albums have been nearly fully totally different. My first and third albums have been right, however the different three highlighted by Spotify have been all fallacious. My second-most-streamed album ought to have been my fourth, with my true second-most-listened-to album being omitted from Wrapped altogether.
Per Final FM, and my reminiscence of 2025, my second high album ought to’ve been Jack Stauber’s “Micropop”: an experimental, impartial album with 99 songs. Whereas the songs are brief, they’re all a minimum of 30 seconds. Regardless of that, the album was nowhere to be seen. Spotify states that calculating high albums for Wrapped makes use of its “personal distinctive logic“. However, for one thing to be fully omitted makes it appear to be one thing has gone fallacious, particularly when different, non-typical albums are lacking, too. In the meantime, I technically solely heard my third high album in full as soon as.
My fifth high album was equally excluded — this time, a soundtrack album. After I’m not masking tech, I moonlight as an leisure reporter, so I hearken to a whole lot of soundtracks. Consequently, I really feel it is consultant of my tastes for a minimum of one to make it into the combination. Nonetheless, Wrapped changed it with a recent album. That is the second soundtrack-related exclusion I seen, with one among my high songs being an instrumental movie rating changed with a recent tune as an alternative. Spotify is not filtering out unique soundtracks altogether — KPop Demon Hunters was the second high album globally — however maybe Wrapped struggled to deal with uncommon takes on the album format.
Completely different platforms have totally different approaches, however questions nonetheless stay
As Spotify made clear, it is unattainable to match totally different platforms’ knowledge with 100% accuracy. Firms design their knowledge assortment in another way relying on ethos, strategy, and what they imagine creates the perfect person expertise. Regardless of that, some variations have been nonetheless stark sufficient to boost questions.
One determine from my Wrapped was a stand-out instance of this: the variety of albums listened to in a yr. Spotify’s suggestion made me elevate an eyebrow. Apparently, I had listened to twenty-eight albums all through 2025. I might’ve guessed I heard extra of their entirety, but it surely’s a believable quantity — aside from the truth that Final FM suggests I’ve scrobbled round 1,600 albums. This can be a clear instance of various platforms logging knowledge in another way. Spotify, on one hand, is probably going counting an album stream as listening from entrance to again, whereas Final FM is counting it primarily based on what number of totally different albums you have scrobbled a tune from.
That distinction nonetheless does not imply that Spotify’s album monitoring is wholly correct. I spoke to somebody who tracks their album listening manually utilizing a spreadsheet, additionally prompted by suspicions about Wrapped’s accuracy. They replace their spreadsheet each time they stream an album in full, making a listening database. The gulf between the determine offered by Spotify and their spreadsheet was narrower, however nonetheless existed. Their data confirmed they’d listened to 358 albums in full by November sixteenth, whereas Spotify Wrapped claimed they solely streamed 344. After all, this error might be chalked as much as something from incorrect logging to offline listening, particularly with out additional transparency round how Wrapped’s knowledge is collected.
Algorithmic listening shapes your conduct earlier than it makes it to Wrapped
Proper now, it is exhausting to say if Wrapped’s thought of your high music is really legitimate. Partially due to many person stories of inaccurate Wrappeds, and partially as a result of Spotify’s algorithmic listening is predicting and dictating your conduct the entire time it is gathering knowledge.
Considered one of Spotify’s best-known options is its clever algorithms, which form your pre-made playlists, choose the songs you discover in your Uncover Weekly, and generate countless radio stations associated to your latest listens. It is easy to complete an album and slip into an infinite autoplay of Spotify’s alternatives. A lot in order that it’d even make up a bigger quantity of what you stream than you understand. When this occurs, Wrapped is not essentially validly recording your tastes, the way you interact with audio, or the albums which have had the most important influence in your yr. As an alternative, it is a minimum of partly measuring what it is served as much as you often over the months.
That is to not say you don’t have any alternative in what you hearken to, or any management over your Wrapped. You continue to select what to tune into, and you may even use workarounds to make Spotify’s shuffle characteristic extra random and fewer algorithmically-driven. However, until you are tremendous acutely aware of your listening habits, it is greater than seemingly that a few of your end-of-year figures are going to be a minimum of slightly formed by Spotify’s personal methods, relatively than being an ideal image of your true high music from the previous yr.
