Spotify Wrapped, a recap of users' listening year, dropped on Wednesday with new social features, IRL pop-ups and AI-powered listening stats — presenting a vivid example of how music is being discovered, marketed and monetized in 2025.
Why it matters: Wrapped has become a cultural holiday that now doubles as a window into a music ecosystem overwhelmed by volume, driven by algorithms and reshaped by AI.
Driving the trend: Interviews with a music scholar and a former major-label exec show how Spotify's dominance — and Wrapped's design — reflect a fast-changing, increasingly crowded industry.
- Joe Aboud, a former major label executive and founder of 444 Sounds, says streaming platforms now see 100,000 to 120,000 new tracks uploaded every day — roughly 1.5 million a week.
- AI-generated tracks already make up nearly one in five uploads on some platforms, said Jeremy Morris, a media and cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, raising concerns about royalty dilution and algorithmic bias.
- "Streaming is the new record-store shelf," Morris told Axios, adding that algorithms now determine which artists get the best placement.
Flashback: Lizzo's recent viral video claiming the music industry is "in shambles" captured one part of the story — but not the part Morris says matters.
- The line overshadowed her point that artists now have new ways to reach audiences and build community.
Context: Morris — who wrote "Selling Digital Music, Formatting Culture" about the shift from CDs to MP3s — says today's streaming upheaval echoes earlier cycles of disruption.
- CDs were an industry-designed format; MP3s came from outside the music business entirely, sparking a collapse in CD revenue that many mistook for the collapse of music itself.
- "People like to hear that the industry is failing," he notes, but the truth is more complicated: technology reshapes distribution, not demand.
- Streaming is simply the latest retail model — a place where Spotify's interface operates like shelf space in a record store, determining which artists are discovered and which disappear.
Zoom in: Wrapped's new interactive features — clubs, leaderboards and "listening age" — are designed to gamify fandom and keep Spotify central to how people define their musical identities.
- But the fun sits atop an attention economy that artists say is harder than ever to break through.
What they're saying: Aboud says the sheer volume of music on DSPs has changed the game — artists aren't competing for streams as much as attention.
- And even viral success can be hollow: "Some artists have a billion streams and can't sell a T-shirt," he tells Axios.
Morris argues the industry isn't collapsing — it's evolving.
- "Every era feels like crisis, but the tension is always the same: How do artists get heard?"
Between the lines: Wrapped highlights a subtle shift happening across the business:
- Distribution > discovery. Artists are writing with platforms in mind, crafting 10-second moments built for TikTok or Spotify snippets.
- Algorithms are the new gatekeepers. Both experts warn about machine-learning biases that could sideline independent, Black or queer artists.
- The middle is falling out. Stars like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift can still move millions, but emerging artists face a decade-long climb to build real, durable audiences.
Wrapped's rise mirrors what's happening across media: Personalization is winning. Platforms set the rules, and creators are forced to reverse-engineer the algorithms to survive.
- It remains to be seen whether Spotify will invest more heavily in human curation to counter AI sprawl, how artists adapt their release strategies and how the next breakthrough act builds community — not just streams.
The bottom line: Wrapped is still a celebration. But it also reveals the truth of the modern music economy: the most challenging part of the job isn't making songs — it's being seen.
Go deeper: 2025 Spotify Wrapped: Bad Bunny takes Swift's spot at the top
