Last year’s Spotify Wrapped was wildly disappointing, but this year did they really do any better? If you don’t remember, 2021’s Spotify Wrapped was decidedly a trainwreck.

This year’s Spotify Wrapped was chock full of new features, musical auras, listening personalities, artist thank you videos that added a personal touch. Spotify is easy to criticize, being a big company known for underpaying artists, should we really pat them on the back for this year’s improvements.

The design, while more than marginally better than last year isn’t all that, being better than last year doesn’t say much. 2021’s was a “design nightmare” according to Creative Bloq, and most students at Glen Rock. Last year’s was bad for a few reasons, namely legibility, how can anyone enjoy something they can barely read.

The wrapped is supposed to display listening data. All the fun is finding out your top genre and acting shocked that you got the genre that you strategically listened to all year. This year made a great improvement in that respect, but in the color scheme area there are mixed feelings. Some feel it’s overdoing the neon and looks “like halloween”, others find it cute and bright. Spotify wrapped is the perfect place for spotify to introduce fun designs and a good place for them to solidify their identity.

There are lots of directions for them to go, classic and timeless, fun and trendy, or an aging company trying their best to latch onto trends and almost doing it perfectly. Spotify wrapped is another attempt, a successful one at that to stay relevant, wrapped does what it’s intended to, gets people to use spotify, and talk about it. This years Spotify Wrapped while better than last year has left a lot to be desired, but its still memorable and effective.