Every year Apple Music subscribers watch while Spotify fans share their most listened to music of the year. They’re so smug. But you might not know that Apple Music has always had these kinds of playlists, they just weren’t as easy to find.
Yes, Apple Music has a yearly recap
Yesterday Apple began rolling out this year’s Apple Music Replay playlist at the bottom of everyone’s Listen Now Page. It features your 100 most listened to songs of the year and, as always, it’s fascinating to get that kind of insight into your moods and habits.
My top is made up of the new album from my favourite band that came out this year, songs that I like playing the drums to, and a variety of anguished and angry songs that perfectly summed up the general 2020 mood.
Technically the Replay playlist has existed since February and has been updated every week since then — but it’s only now that it’s being featured. It’s also really only helpful at the end of the year.
In that same Replay row you can also see your playlists going back to at least 2015, if you’ve been on the service that long.
It’s worth having a look and comparing the genres in this year’s playlist to previous years and seeing how covid-19 has changed your music taste. There was a lot of evidence that people were listening to more mellow music during the lockdown. Were you? Or were you one of the people who found comfort in rage? Or did you confusingly mix the two?
How to share it
Although Apple Music’s focus is less on creating sharable pages of your personal data with nice graphics, you can still show off your excellent taste to friends and strangers.
You’ll still know whether you’re genre-fluid or deeply committed to the Hamilton soundtrack, you just won’t have a pink a yellow graphic to show for it. And, unlike Spotify’s stories, it’s purely which music you listened to most.
If you want to share your playlist from your iPhone, just open the playlist, go to the three dots in the top right corner, go to share and then take the link to your social media site of choice. For what it’s worth, this is mine.