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Engadget’s 2024 Wrapped roundup is a collection of staff members’ personal listening stories—not a ranking of the year’s most-streamed music. Published December 7, 2024, it brings together recaps from Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay and Tidal Rewind, alongside one contributor’s own picks. The entries show what individual listeners returned to, from new releases to older albums, and how confidently they trusted their year-end summaries.
Read Engadget’s full 2024 staff roundup.
Spotify Wrapped: a favorite artist and a question about the timeline
Spotify Wrapped gave contributors different things to reflect on. Mariella Moon recalled listening in hospital and clinic waiting rooms and named Fujii Kaze as her top artist. “My top artist for the year, however, was Fujii Kaze, whose music gave me a lot of comfort when I needed it the most,” she wrote.
Cherlynn Low questioned one detail in her own recap: Spotify placed “APT” by Rosé and Bruno Mars in August, though she believed the song had been released later. That is her concern about her personal listening summary, not evidence that Spotify’s records were wrong for users generally. Aaron Souppouris offered the brief reflection “RIP New Jeans.”
Apple Music Replay: new albums alongside familiar favorites
Valentina Palladino’s Replay notes ranged across pop, hip-hop and Latin music. She mentioned Kendrick Lamar’s GNX; Charli xcx tracks “Club classics,” “Sympathy is a knife” and “365”; Rauw Alejandro’s Grasa and “Legendario,” “Manhattan” and “Menina”; Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter; and Eminem’s The Death of Slim Shady. These are personal favorites and repeat listens, not a comparative ranking.
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Nathan Ingraham described a year of returning to familiar music. Daughter’s Stereo Mind Game became a fixation, helped by a live studio session posted on YouTube, while “Blame Brett” by The Beaches was his most-played song. He also cited The Beaches’ Blame My Ex, Tool’s Fear Inoculum, David Gilmour’s Luck and Strange and Pearl Jam, as well as albums by Bathe Alone, Adrianne Lenker, Billie Eilish, Medium Build, Girl in Red and Waxahatchee.
Tidal Rewind: Ariana Grande at the top, with a grain of salt
Cheyenne MacDonald said Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine filled the top of her Tidal year-end playlist. Other most-listened-to songs she named were “Cry For Me” by Castle Rat, “Bloom” by Baroness, “How Far Will We Take It?” by Orville Peck and Noah Cyrus, “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish, “Weird World” by Allie X and “Red Wine Supernova” by Chappell Roan.
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MacDonald noticed what she perceived as a lack of emo in her recap and said she treated the result with a grain of salt. As with Low’s Spotify anecdote, this describes one listener’s reaction; it does not establish a broader problem with a service’s data.
A personal pick outside a streaming recap
Avery Ellis named Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future and Robber Robber’s Wild Guess as personal picks. Ellis also cautioned that estimating their most-listened-to songs from memory was imprecise and likely influenced by recency bias. That distinction matters: a personal recollection is not the same as a service-generated listening record.
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What this roundup can—and can’t—tell you
The article offers snapshots of individual taste across three recap services and one set of personal picks. Its contributors mention both recent releases and older records that remained in rotation, but the entries are not based on a shared measurement method. There are no listener-wide statistics, comparable service metrics or methodology for deciding which music was most popular across Engadget staff, let alone among all listeners. The roundup is best read as a set of personal year-end listening stories, not a chart or a test of which recap service is more accurate or comprehensive.
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