Apple Music: How to see what you listened to in 2020 as Spotify reveals its ‘Wrapped’ feature

iOS 8.4, which brings the new Music app, will be released in the late afternoon, and the radio station will be turned on an hour later

Spotify has launched its annual “Wrapped” feature, letting users see what songs and artists they’ve listened through the year.

And it has led, as ever to frustration among Apple Music users who are irritated they cannot see their own listening habits documented so nicely.

While Apple Music and Spotify are largely similar, the lack of “Wrapped” features on the former have caused upset among its users in the past. The 2020 round-up is the same, with thousands of people complaining on Twitter that they are unable to get involved with the discussion of the most popular songs of the year.

In the past, that has forced Apple Music users to create lists of their own. Those have included relying on iTunes’ “Smart Playlists” features, as well as creating complicated workarounds.

In recent years, however, Apple has been working to give its users access to something at least partly similar to Spotify’s Wrapped.

Called “Replay", the feature collates the music you have been listening to over the last year and assembles it into both a list of top tracks and a playlist that can then be listened to.

It can be found on Apple’s devoted website. Clicking that should open it in the browser, and might ask you to log in using your Apple ID, at which point it should become visible.

If nothing appears, then you might not have listened to enough music. You might also have the “Use Listening History” feature turned off, or be listening to songs that are not in the Apple Music catalogue.

Once it has loaded up, you will be able to scroll through and see the top tracks, artists and albums you have played, as well as how many hours you have spent listening over the last year.

In previous years, Apple has listed the Replay feature as being in beta. That designation is gone, suggesting the company is more confident with how it works.

Apple Music’s features are still limited when compared to Spotify. It is not so easy to share the results, for instance, and it does not compare your listening with other users, which Spotify can do by letting users know how much they are listening to a given artist when compared to other people.

What’s more, it seems unlikely that Apple Music is ever going to offer a similar function. Spotify has always been more happy to use the data it gathers from customers – in advertising campaigns, as well as for features like Wrapped – whereas Apple has consistently said that it collects as little information on listening habits as it can.

Apple Music’s Replay tool does have some benefits over Spotify, however. For one, it runs throughout the year, meaning that it can be visited and re-visited at any time, and it also includes playlists for all previous years, allowing you to easily skip back to any previous time you were listening to Apple Music.