Spotify Wrapped — the platform’s annual snapshot of users’ listening habits — arrived Wednesday with new social tools, in-person pop-ups and AI-powered insights. Beyond the colorful graphics, it offers a sharp look at how music discovery, marketing and monetization work in 2025.

Why it matters: Wrapped has evolved into a cultural event — and a lens through which to view a music ecosystem flooded with content, driven by algorithms and increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.

Driving the trend: Conversations with a music scholar and a former major-label executive highlight how Spotify’s dominance — and Wrapped’s design — mirror the rapid transformation of an overcrowded industry.

• Joe Aboud, former label executive and founder of 444 Sounds, says streaming platforms now receive 100,000 to 120,000 new tracks every day — adding up to roughly 1.5 million a week.

• AI-generated music already represents nearly 20% of uploads on some platforms, according to Jeremy Morris, a media and cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, raising alarms about shrinking royalties and algorithmic bias.

• “Streaming is the new record-store shelf,” Morris told Axios — noting that algorithms now control which artists get prime placement.

Flashback: Lizzo’s viral claim that the industry is “in shambles” captured only part of the reality. Her larger point — that artists now have new ways to connect with audiences — was overshadowed.

The bigger picture: Morris, author of Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture, argues today’s streaming turmoil echoes past disruptions.

• CDs were designed by the industry; MP3s came from outside it, triggering a collapse in CD revenue that many wrongly interpreted as the death of music itself.

• “People like to hear that the industry is failing,” he said. “But the truth is more nuanced: technology changes distribution, not demand.”

• Streaming is simply the newest retail model — with Spotify’s interface functioning like record-store shelf space that dictates which artists break through and which vanish.

Zoom in: Wrapped’s new interactive tools — clubs, leaderboards and a “listening age” metric — gamify music fandom and reinforce Spotify’s role in shaping personal identity.

But beneath the fun lies an intensifying attention economy where artists struggle to stand out.

What they’re saying:
Aboud notes that with so much music flooding digital platforms, the competition has shifted: “Artists aren’t competing for streams anymore — they’re competing for attention.”

And even viral fame can be deceptive. “Some artists have a billion streams and can’t sell a T-shirt,” he told Axios.

Morris emphasizes that the industry isn’t collapsing — it’s transforming.
“Every era feels like a crisis, but the core tension remains: how do artists get heard?”

Between the lines: Wrapped underscores several major shifts now defining the music business:

• Distribution is overtaking discovery. Artists tailor songs for platform-specific moments — 10-second clips optimized for TikTok or Spotify snippets.

• Algorithms are the new gatekeepers. Experts warn machine-learning biases may disadvantage independent, Black or queer artists.

• The middle class of music is shrinking. Megastars like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift still dominate, while emerging artists face years of uphill work to build sustainable audiences.

• Personalization rules. Wrapped’s popularity mirrors a broader trend across media: creators must reverse-engineer platform rules to be visible at all.

Whether Spotify boosts human curation, how artists adapt release strategies, and how the next breakout act builds community — not just streams — all remain open questions.

The bottom line: Wrapped is still a celebration. But it also exposes the reality of today’s music economy: the hardest part of being an artist isn’t making great songs — it’s getting noticed.