2024 Spotify Wrapped: When your yearly personalised playlist will be released and why it’s been delayed this year

It’s the question everyone is asking: When is this year’s Spotify Wrapped being released?

The annual personalised playlist of users’ most-played songs has become a major event — with music-lovers eagerly awaiting the announcement of their music habits.

Alongside the playlist, the music streaming service “wraps up” users’ data by breaking down their favourite artists and genres, total minutes played, and total artists listened to.

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today

Spotify Wrapped includes data from January through to a few weeks before the feature is launched.

The cut-off date is left as late in the year as possible to ensure the most personalised experience possible, the streaming service told 7NEWS.com.au last year.

In previous years, it has been released on either the last day of November or the first day of December — which has also always been a Friday or Saturday.

Last year, the playlist was released on November 29, while it was released on November 30 in 2022 and December 1 in 2021 and 2020.

That makes this year’s Spotify Wrapped officially late.

Spotify teased the release on Monday, tweeting: “Any guesses on your Top 5 songs of 2024?”

Users were unimpressed, responding with memes and calls to “just drop it already”.

“Can you literally just release it already holy s***,” one user said.

“Girl just give it to us…,” another user said.

Spotify Wrapped, the annual personalised playlist of Spotify users’ most-played songs, has become a major event. Credit: Spotify

The delay in Spotify Wrapped 2024 comes a year after the streaming service dealt with multiple rounds of layoffs.

It announced it was laying off 17 per cent of its workforce worldwide last December, following a 2 per cent cut in June 2023 and 6 per cent cut in January 2023.

The overall cuts equated to approximately 2300 jobs.

The move aimed to reduce costs and adjust for a slowdown in growth, CEO Daniel Ek said at the time.

In an email to staff, Ek said Spotify was taking “substantial action to rightsize our costs”.

The company took on too many employees over the years 2020 and 2021, when capital was cheap and tech companies could invest significant sums into team expansion, he said.

While the roles cut have never been revealed, users have complained about a declining quality in the service in the past year.

Users criticised the recommended songs algorithm earlier this year, particularly what they felt was excessive promotion of Sabrina Carpenter’s songs Espresso and Please Please Please.

Music enthusiasts documented their streams on the platform, and how these songs would play as the recommended track for songs users did not feel were in any way related — such as music in the reggaeton and metal genres.

Spotify trialled Discovery Mode in 2020 — which allows “artists and labels (to) identify songs that are a priority”, according to the streaming giant — and later opened it up officially to artists.

Artists and labels are not charged an upfront cost for Discovery Mode, but Spotify takes a commission of revenue generated from streams in that mode.

It was never officially confirmed whether Sabrina Carpenter’s songs were part of Discovery Mode.

An investigation into the Australian music charts also found Spotify, and other services such as Apple Music, were recommending US and UK artists at a higher rate than local acts.

A significant decline in Australian artists and artists from non-English speaking countries was documented by the investigation.

The impact streaming has had on the Australian charts has meant the percentage of Australian and New Zealand artists in the top 100 Singles charts declined from an average of 16 per cent in 2000, to about 10 per cent in 2017, and just 2.5 per cent in 2023.

This marks an 85 per cent reduction of local artist representation on our charts from 2000 to 2023.

Research lead Tim Kelly said Spotify Australia had reached out to him after the data was released.

“The folk at Spotify Australia reached out to me to listen to my findings first-hand,” he said.

“Full credit to Spotify Aus for being open to listen to research that in some ways challenges their business model,” he said.

-With NBC