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Music tells the story of our lives – and trusty old Last.fm does it better than gaudy Spotify Wrapped
The music tracking site runs a reduced service these days, but still offers an alternative to AI-generated slideshows and made-up genres that’s useful – and genuinely revealing
Still, I resent its financial distribution model to artists: my £11.99 a month isn’t divided between the musicians I actually listen to, but proportionally related to their popularity across the platform, meaning Ed Sheeran is getting significantly more of my money than Mabe Fratti. In a comment piece for the New Yorker titled “The hollow allure of Spotify Wrapped”, critic Brady Brickner-Wood writes: “If we can’t trust the apps to tell us a meaningful story about our art consumption, how will anyone, including ourselves, ever discover the idiosyncratic composition of our inner lives?” It was founded in 2002 and now runs a reduced service compared to its early days, although not an enshittified one: it doesn’t package my listening back to me in stimulating graphics like Spotify does, but provides a genuinely useful, straightforward list of my life in music – when Guardian writers come to vote for our albums of the year, it’s the first place I look to discern the sound of my 2024.
Or read this on The Guardian