Christmas party season is here with a vengeance – but there is one shindig that ever greater numbers of music fans will be delighted to skip. That is the digital jamboree that is Spotify Wrapped, the streaming Goliath’s annual deep dive into the listening habits of its 700 million or so monthly users.’

Spotify has been making a song and dance about Wrapped for going on a decade now – stoking the hype by keeping the release date of its yearly stocking filler (ahem) “under wraps” until as late as possible, making it ever more personalised with slide shows including, this year, your “listening age” and “personality”. It has also cajoled some of the world’s biggest stars into recording short “thank you” videos to the fans who help them clock up their billions of streams. These clips generally have the vibe of a hostage forced to lie to their loved ones that they’re doing just fine and are looking forward to further quality time with their kidnapper.

Maybe it’s time to scrap Wrapped. A backlash is building amid deeper disquiet about Spotify’s influence on the industry and its negative impact on both artists’ ability to make a living and listeners’ ability to distinguish between

© The Irish Times