There’s how old you are, and then there’s how old Spotify thinks you are.
That divide surfaced this week with the release of Spotify Wrapped, the streaming service’s year-end recap. The interactive slideshow walks listeners through top artists, albums, genres and more using their listening data — and this edition bluntly assigns each user a “listening age” based on which era of music they listened to more than their peers.
“Age is just a number, so don’t take this personally,” one slide deadpans, before delivering results that have alternately humbled, amused and baffled users. Spotify declared Charli XCX “spiritually 75” because she listens heavily to late-1960s music. Grimes was labeled 92, Gracie Abrams registered as 14 — about half her real age — and Canadian public figure Mark Carney revealed a youthful 44.
Within hours of Wrapped’s rollout, social media filled with screenshots and memes as listeners reacted to listening ages far younger or older than their actual ages. Jokes about “listening age gap relationships,” “dinosaurs” and “psychiatric evaluations” proliferated. People continued the now-familiar ritual of reposting Wrapped highlights, giving Spotify free publicity while sharing a slice of their identity.
The annual feature has become a cultural moment. In past years Spotify has assigned users to playful categories like “Sound Towns.” Marcus Collins, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and an R&B fan with a listening age a few years younger than his real age, says features like Wrapped let people project identity through cultural consumption.
Listening age adds another dimension to that projection. “It creates another identity project force, another … shock to the system for us to talk about,” Collins says. “If you’re 20 and your listening age is 70, what does that say about you?”
How Spotify calculates it
Spotify didn’t respond to NPR’s request for comment before publication, but on a company webpage it attributes listening age to the idea of a “reminiscence bump” — the tendency for people to feel especially connected to music from their youth. Research shows adults retain strong memories from their teenage years, including musical memories; a 2013 study found young adults often have vivid positive memories of music their parents or grandparents loved.
Spotify says it analyzes a listener’s songs to identify a five-year span that the listener engaged with more than other listeners their age. The company hypothesizes that this five-year window corresponds to a listener’s reminiscence bump and assumes listeners were between 16 and 21 during those formative years. For example, if someone listens more to late-1970s music than peers, Spotify playfully hypothesizes a listening age of 63 — the age of someone who would have been in their teens or early 20s during that era.
Collins says the approach taps into nostalgia and helps “carve out where we sit in the timeline of our … social world.” An extreme or unexpected listening age can provoke conversation and engagement. “We don’t talk about things that are just boring — we talk about the things that are unbelievable,” he says.
What’s the catch?
Is the feature a clever marketing tactic to spur shares and engagement? Could it be “rage bait”? Collins acknowledges both points: Wrapped is a tool for connection and identity, but it also serves Spotify’s business through social sharing. “The truth of the matter is, it’s both of them at the same time,” he says. “The best marketing on the planet is us.”
Collins notes he, like many, often learns Wrapped is live from friends’ social posts rather than ads, which makes him want to participate in the social practice. For Spotify, that cultural production drives publicity and usage.
Spotify maintains that its slides are “made to be accurate, fair, and reflective, while still keeping a sense of mystery and magic.” That mystery can frustrate. The author of this piece, for example, was content with a listening age of 70 — until a younger sibling reported a listening age of 73.