Apple has introduced Apple Music Replay ’25 with a more personalized view of your listening habits — rather than just focusing on the annual wrap-up, it’s a running look at what you enjoy (or suffer through) most often, even after December 31st rolls past. It will still remind you who, thanks to a new trove of data-inflected signals that reveal surprises, comebacks, and obsessive repeats you may not have even realized defined your year.
More than just the regular totals for the minutes you spent listening and how many artists you listened to, Replay ’25 showcases which new artists you discovered, who you continued to go back to over the past year, and which acts popped back up in your rotation unexpectedly. You’ll also receive a new playlist of your top songs and month-by-month Replay highlights tracking phases of your listening, and a Replay All Time playlist that will collect music you listened to most since the day you started using Apple Music.
What’s new in Replay ’25: modular cards and highlights
Replay ’25 is a lot more modular and flexible. Not every card surfaces for every listener, and it’s one less invitation for the experience to feel templated rather than a curated tour of your actual habits. If you went deep on a few artists, the “kept coming back to” view tells us more; if you sampled widely, the discovery card is what it’s all about. It’s a small shift with a big consequence for how personal the recap seems.
The once-a-month highlight reel needs more love. It splits your year into chapters — festival-season binges, late-night ambient streaks, that one brief hyperpop detour — because the shifts are things a single top-10 cannot show. Meanwhile, as a living archive, the Replay All Time playlist is also useful for picking up on longer-term patterns and finding gems that might have exerted behind-the-scenes influence over your taste in music.
Access everything in the Home tab whilst keeping Replay where you already listen. The result is a recap that feels woven in instead of bolted on, and it reduces the friction to jump back in, save playlists, and revisit favorites.
Personalization with purpose drives smarter music insights
“More data” isn’t just Apple’s approach here. It’s more intelligent about what signals to care about. Repeat tones, session recency, or the ever-changing tide of your listening sessions can be more interesting than raw minutes. That’s the new modules leaning into discovery versus devotion, and that’s also them calling out comebacks — the artists who fell away only to snap back, sometimes as if waiting for you to be ready (and then some) — because those trajectories often have more to say on listener intent than a trend line.
Industry researchers have continually pointed out that discovery and nostalgia sit side by side in those streaming habits, and Replay ’25 reflects that reality. Instead of squeezing everything into the same leaderboard, it creates a truer portrait: what you found, what you never let go of, and what you returned to when nothing else scratched quite as deep.
How Replay ’25 compares with Spotify and YouTube rivals
Spotify’s Wrapped and YouTube Music’s Recap transformed year-end rundowns into cultural events, and Apple’s response here is to be more granular and less theatrical. Replay ’25’s modular cards, monthly chapters, and long-horizon All Time list give it a different flavor — less memeable, maybe (though arguably more useful if you treat your listening data as diary rather than billboard).
Analysts at companies like MIDiA Research have noted that such recaps are effective retention machines, particularly if they can emphasize identity and discovery. Apple’s refinements will offer assistance on both fronts: die-hards get recognition for deep-listening streaks, and explorers get their range of taste mirrored back with context, not just counts.
New artist tools arrive alongside Apple’s year-end charts
Apple also released its year-end charts, and APT_ANIMALS by ROSÉ x Bruno Mars was listed at the top of the chart alongside this personalized experience. It’s a headline that dovetails with the wider pop momentum and cross-platform stickiness noted regularly by chart watchers like Luminate and Chartmetric over the year.
Apple also added a replay experience for artists, pulling up listenership growth and year-over-year performance. For working musicians and their teams, these snippets of data can help determine everything from setlists to release dates, especially when combined with third-party analytics. What you yield isn’t just vanity; seeing where momentum built or notched down over time can influence tangible decisions.
How to find your Replay ’25 and revisit your top moments
Launch Apple Music and go to the Home tab, where you will see Apple Music Replay ’25. There is some variability — some modules only appear when they have meaningful stories to tell. Save the annual playlist to cement a year in your life, scan monthly highlights to remember that phase you forgot about, and dip into Replay All Time when you’re ready for the bigger picture of your listening life.
It’s still your year in music — but with Replay ’25, the story sounds more like you wrote it.
