YouTube Music Recap: Not Quite Spotify Wrapped, but Still a Blast

Apple Music Replay fails to live up to Spotify Wrapped, while YouTube Music’s 2023 Recap offers a personalized and interactive experience. Three new features were introduced this year by YouTube Music – custom album art, music moods, and the ability to personalize and shuffle Google Photos with favorite songs. For the first time, stats can be viewed in the YouTube Music app, whereas Apple Music’s year-end review is only available on the web.

To access YouTube Music’s Recap, select your profile avatar in the top-right corner and tap on “Your Recap.” It shows your top five artists, songs, moods, genres, albums, and playlists as well as your longest listening streak and how many total minutes you listened to in 2023.

Custom album art is a new feature in the Recap experience, where YouTube Music creates an album cover capturing your vibe and aesthetic for the entire year from your top songs. Mood matching, a feature that associates your top songs with terms like laidback, happy-go-plucky, and stoked, has also been introduced by the music service.

Last year, YouTube Music launched shareable cards that could be personalized by adding your own images from Google Photos. Now, it gives you the ability to shuffle and customize the photos, combining your favorite songs from each season with nostalgic memories to create a visual summarizing the entire year.

YouTube Music, with its right idea, competes with Spotify Wrapped, which has nine years of content and hilarious memes. In contrast, Apple Music lacks flavor with its boring metrics and muted color schemes.