It’s December 1st, which for Spotify customers, means the annual custom of the music streaming service’s Spotify Wrapped roundup: personalized, flashy infographics of the highest songs, playlists, artists, and podcast that you simply’ve listened to during the last 12 months, chock-full of knowledge, temper boards, and only a sprinkling of judgment.

I, sadly, don’t use Spotify. Instead, I pay Apple $10 per thirty days for Apple Music, Spotify’s greatest competitor. And so whereas just about everybody I do know on Twitter and Instagram is spending everything of in the present day placing their private style in music on blast, I get… a playlist of the songs that I listened to essentially the most this 12 months.

Spotify has been consuming Apple’s lunch for years now with Wrapped, which has virtually turn into its personal web vacation annually. And but, it took Apple 4 full years to even launch its bare-bones Replay characteristic, which debuted in 2019 and hasn’t been meaningfully up to date since. (I’ve been utilizing kludged collectively Smart Playlists on iTunes for years to attempt to poorly replicate the Spotify expertise.)

2021 is not any exception, with Spotify providing what seems like its most lavish recaps but. My spouse (who’s a Spotify person) spent the morning displaying off her bespoke playlist to me, which included (amongst different issues) specifically curated songs for particular moods, rankings of the place she positioned amongst international Doja Cat listeners, a color-changing “audio aura,” and an interactive quiz. All of it’s designed to be shared and proven off on different social media platforms.

And it’s not simply music listeners, both. Artists seem to love Spotify Wrapped, too, with their very own personalized recaps displaying off what number of hundreds of thousands of occasions their followers streamed their music across the globe.

It’s not that Apple Music couldn’t do its personal model of Wrapped; Apple definitely has the info, and I discover it extraordinarily exhausting to imagine that the $2.79 trillion firm can’t discover the house in its price range to process a group of designers and engineers into constructing the same software. Or possibly it may attempt to purchase Last.fm, which already does a complete bunch of music developments based mostly on prospects’ listening habits, if it wished to dump a few of that work.

And there are many causes for Apple to do precisely that moreover my annual dose of social media FOMO: Apple has made no secret of its ambitions for recurring service income to function a key a part of its future going ahead. And but, as an alternative of leaping on the simple advertising and marketing win and large person goodwill {that a} extra strong replay characteristic may supply, 12 months after 12 months after 12 months, Apple simply chooses to do absolutely the naked minimal.

Look at it one other method: Spotify, yearly, manages to get hundreds of thousands of individuals to spend days posting algorithmically generated Spotify commercials to each nook of their social media presences, with out even providing any free giveaways or incentives. Why wouldn’t Apple Music be making an attempt to get a bit of that motion?

It’s not even like Apple has to fret about angering Spotify by shamelessly ripping off considered one of its hottest options: Spotify already thinks Apple is a “ruthless bully” that monopolizes the App Store to favor its personal providers and has filed an antitrust grievance within the EU to that finish. It’s not like there’s a superb, wholesome company relationship to break right here. If Instagram may shamelessly copy tales from Snapchat, Apple can determine the best way to replicate its personal model of Wrapped.

In truth, it’s more and more shocking 12 months after 12 months that seemingly nobody is copying Spotify’s absurdly in style knowledge visualizations. With just a few exceptions like Microsoft’s latest twentieth anniversary Xbox retrospective, there are nonetheless just about no takers on following Spotify’s lead right here. Where’s Netflix’s flashy look again on the exhibits you binged over the 12 months, or PlayStation’s deep dive into what number of hours you spent making an attempt to beat Pride and Joy Prototype in Final Fantasy VII Remake? The closest comparability I can consider is Goodreads’ “Your Year In Books,” which additionally capabilities extra as a straight listing than the excellent expertise that Spotify has created right here.

But for now, I’m as soon as once more spending December full of envy as my Spotify-using buddies get to point out off all their favourite songs, left hoping with more and more futile optimism that possibly Apple Music will determine issues out subsequent.