The new “listening age” tool aims to estimate the generational era reflected in a user’s music choices. Rather than drawing on rigorous data science, the feature leans on the idea of the “reminiscence bump” — a tendency for people to gravitate toward music that shaped their formative years. Spotify analyses a user’s listening patterns, compares them with those of people in similar age groups, and then “playfully hypothesises” a musical age.
The results have ranged from flattering to bewildering. Gen Z users were among the first to point out that Spotify had placed them somewhere in their seventies, while parents joked that their children’s repeated plays of the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack had skewed the family’s musical maturity. Even the artist Grimes shared her assigned age of 92, attributing it to her “love of the oldies.”
For others, the feature offered an unexpected role reversal. Mark Morgan, a 37-year-old ecologist, took his score of 72 in stride, linking it to his recent listening to Linda Ronstadt’s 1970 ballad Long Long Time—a song he’d revisited after it appeared in HBO’s The Last of Us. “It maybe makes you feel a little less cool,” he said, “but I wasn’t annoyed.”
John Howes, 67, from Worcestershire, was given a musical age of 17 thanks to his habit of exploring new releases for a local music-sharing group. And in Berkshire, 60-year-old logistics consultant Jon Porter found himself labelled 21, while his 21-year-old daughter Bethan earned a listening age of 59.
While the feature’s metrics may be lighthearted, Spotify’s motivation is more strategic. Wrapped has become one of the most successful digital marketing phenomena of the decade, driven by users’ eagerness to share personalised insights across social media. “Spotify Wrapped is the most successful marketing tactic of the last 10 years,” said digital marketing entrepreneur Troy Osinoff. “It is built on one simple idea: people are obsessed with themselves.”
This year’s Wrapped also reaffirmed the dominance of major artists on the platform: Taylor Swift remained the UK’s most-streamed act for the third consecutive year, ahead of Drake, Sabrina Carpenter, and The Weeknd. Alex Warren’s Ordinary topped the list of most-streamed songs.
However, the celebratory campaign has been met with a counter-movement. A rival “Unwrapped” initiative has drawn attention to Spotify’s role in hosting AI-generated music and carrying advertisements from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency central to the enforcement of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Critics argue that the ads are at odds with the platform’s professed values.
Spotify has said the ICE messaging is part of a wide-reaching government campaign that spans multiple media platforms and does not violate its policies. The company noted that users can provide feedback on ads through its thumbs-up or thumbs-down system, and pointed out that it is not alone in carrying government-sponsored placements.
For now, the “listening age” feature has succeeded in its primary aim: giving users something amusing, mildly existential, and highly shareable to talk about — ensuring Spotify Wrapped remains firmly embedded in the cultural calendar.