- Spotify is showing the “Listening Age” – your musical age – for the first time in Wrapped 2025.
- This is based on which decade you listen to an above-average amount of music from.
- According to Spotify, this age statement is a playful hypothesis that is primarily intended to bring the streaming service into conversation.
- According to US digital strategist Troy Osinoff, the plan works because people are obsessed with themselves.
Even if you don’t use Spotify, you’ve probably noticed: the music streaming service has published the personalized annual review “Wrapped”. The corresponding results are diligently shared by users on social media. One feature in particular stands out: the so-called listening age (musical age), which the music streaming service is displaying for the first time this year.
Why is the “Listening Age” special?
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The musical age spit out by Spotify rarely corresponds to the user’s real age. Anyone who is 21 is assigned a listening age of 75, while a 44-year-old is given a musical age of 30. The singer and Musk ex Grimes was given a musical age of 92 (see photo gallery). “You are as old as you feel,” writes Spotify.
Older or younger: What musical age were you certified to be?
“Spotify Wrapped” 2025 refers to this period
How does the Spotify “Listening Age” come about?
The so-called reminiscence bump was used for musical age, writes Spotify. The term comes from memory and developmental psychology. He describes the tendency to feel particularly strongly connected to the music from one’s own formative youth. Especially those between 16 and 21 years old, according to the streaming service. In other words: the music we celebrate stays with us throughout our lives.
For the annual review, we analyzed the five-year period from which a user listened to an above-average amount of music – compared to their peers. The release dates of the songs were crucial. From this, Spotify concluded that he – or she – must have been in their formative teenage years at this point.
Why is Spotify often so far off with its results?
Because the company doesn’t care about accuracy. Spotify itself speaks of “playfully putting forward a hypothesis”. As head of marketing Marc Hazan told “Spiegel”, the main thing is to start a conversation. If you look at all the “Listening Age” slides shared on social media, the marketing tactic more than worked.
Why does this work so well?
The tactic works because it is based on a very simple idea, as US digital strategist Troy Osinoff told the Guardian: “People are obsessed with themselves.” And Spotify takes advantage of this, says Markus Collins, marketing professor at the University of Michigan, to npr.org: Because “the best advertising is not advertising – it is cultural production,” i.e. what people share voluntarily and with joy.
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Fee Anabelle Riebeling (fee) has been working for 20 minutes since 2014. She is deputy. Head of Knowledge, History & Digital and Head of the Fact Check & Verification expert committee.
