Every December, Spotify Wrapped manages to disappoint parents of young children by reminding them that their identity as fully fledged humans has been erased, leaving just a husk of a vessel that exists only to hit the repeat button on “Wheels on the Bus” or the “Encanto” soundtrack.
But, oh, how the tables have finally turned. Now, young people in their teens and 20s are getting a dose of Spotify’s cruel and merciless wrath.
Spotify Wrapped just added a new metric to its year-end personalized wrap-up: “listening age.” In addition to telling you which songs and artists you listened to the most, it will give you an estimated age based on your listening tastes.
And for some people, it’s waaaay off. And Gen Z — and even some of us in the older set — is getting offended.
Gharieth Edries is only 23, but Spotify just told him his listening age is 50. Edries told me that he isn’t totally surprised.
“I dabbled in a bit of Duran Duran this year, due to my parents, unknowingly realizing that I would become overly obsessed with their artwork and that it would appear in my top 5 artists (their music is just sooooo good),” he said. Duran Duran opened a door to more.
“Depeche Mode, Wham, Pet Shop Boys, New Order. These are some of my mother’s favorite bands, and I completely understand her now.”
Charlotte Ward, 22 in real life, is a big Fleetwood Mac fan, and Spotify pegged her as 68 — “unc” status in Gen Z slang.
I have also been a victim of Spotify’s mis-aging me. I’m a spry and youthful 44, but apparently my listening habits are those of a 59-year-old. (I also like ’80s music, although I would have assumed the dominance of the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” soundtrack would have dragged down my average.)
A few of my colleagues here at Business Insider also got some surprising ages: Economy editor Bartie Scott, who’s 36, got 72, and media editor Nathan McAlone, who’s also 36, got a whopping 86 years old. (He thinks that’s because he listens to a lot of classic jazz while reading at home, which sounds very cozy and also exactly what an 86-year-old would do.)
Spotify also suggested some people were younger than they actually are. “I got 23 and tbh I think that’s more offensive somehow,” an unnamed 39-year-old reporter who’s too embarrassed to use her real name said in one of our Slacks. And my editor is 47, but Spotify told him he’s got the musical tastes of someone who’s 30.
The exact formula for calculating the listening age is unclear, but my guess is that it involves assuming a listener is 18 to 20 years old at the year a song is released. The assumption is that if you listen to a ton of the Beatles, your listening age is going to be around 75. If you listen to mainly Taylor Swift, you’re probably 34. I asked Spotify for its secret sauce, but it didn’t immediately respond.
Is it cringe to listen to music that’s way older than you actually are? Well, maybe. Being young and listening to old music is a sign you’re developing a deep and varied musical palate, right? The really humiliating thing would be to be 44 and have it accurately peg you for listening to the same stuff that came out when you were in college. Is having the musical tastes of a much younger person cool or not cool? I truly don’t know!
What does it all mean? It’s all part of the weird fascination of Spotify Wrapped. Music is so uniquely personal; we feel it says so much about who we are, and we can feel proud or embarrassed by this.
As someone who has ceded control of Spotify to my kids’ whims for the last decade, I am delighted to see others join my pain. Maybe when I’m actually 59, I’ll have the time to get back into new music on my own.
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