If you've ever thought that your Spotify Wrapped deserved more attention from your group chat or social media followers — the wait is over.
On Wednesday, Spotify launched new features to accompany its annual round-up of users' most listened-to songs.
This year, users will also now get their Wrapped narrated in podcast form by NotebookLM, Google's AI-powered research and writing assistant that provides tools like summaries or study guides based on materials users upload.
The platform recently went viral after it launched its "deep dive," podcast-like discussion hosted by two conversational AI hosts.
The new Spotify feature enlists the voices of the same two AI hosts from NotebookLM's Audio Overview feature to discuss users' favorite artists, songs, and genres from the year.
"This is the first of its kind integration, and it demonstrates the potential of AI to enhance personalized experiences," said Steven Johnson, Head of Editorial at Google Labs, in a press event for the launch.
The podcast is unique to each user, reflecting their personal listening habits from the year, Johnson said. He also said it demonstrates the potential of AI to enhance these personalized experiences — and raised the point that most people don't have on-demand hosts to sit around and talk about their music choices from the year.
"There's a wonderful, robust market for podcasts on many topics," Johnson said. "But having customized top podcasts for millions of individual people based on their specific listening habits for the year, is just not something that you can do with actual humans."
Johnson said NotebookLM has been at the forefront of customizable AI.
He told BI that in the initial wave of AI, people conversed with models that knew a lot about the world, but nothing about the user asking the questions. When a reliable model is able to bring out these insights and make it interesting, that's when you see a change in the way computers can work, he said.
So far, the AI podcast feature on Spotify is only available with Wrapped. However, you can customize your own podcasts on NotebookLM's platform. Johnson also said the team is looking forward to "a lot of different partnerships," both in audio and text.
Just over a month after Google's NotebookLM Audio Overview tool went viral, NotebookLM introduced a "Customize" button, enabling users to guide the AI conversation. Its partnership with Spotify takes that customization a step further.
Google has implemented more personalized features across several of its platforms, including Google Shopping. Google Shopping now provides personalized recommendations and informative briefs at the top of your search. Spotify has similarly launched personalized features like AI Playlist, which creates playlists based on premium users' prompts. This year's Spotify Wrapped will also allow premium users to prompt the AI Playlist feature to create a playlist of their top genres or suggest artists similar to their top 5.
Spotify Wrapped will also include commentary from its AI DJ reflecting your year in music and incorporating insight from Spotify editors on the year's top tracks and artists of 2024.
The new Wrapped AI Podcast feature is available to free and premium Spotify users in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and Sweden. To find the podcast, you can go to your Wrapped home feed and select your Spotify Wrapped AI podcast.
