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Spotify Wrapped is a fun annual report of your listening habits. every year, Music streaming app Adds new features, like what happened in 2023, when people were appointed A Sound Cityi.e. the city that supposedly matches their listening style. the Spotify wrapped for 2025 It just arrived on Wednesday, and new features this year include a multiplayer game called Wrapped Party and a live assessment of your listening age.
That last one blew my mind a little. My actual age is 57 years old. According to Spotify, my listening age is 79 years.
Seventy-nine.
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President Donald Trump and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are 79 years old. Liza Minnelli is 79 years old. Cher – Well, she’s ageless, but technically, she’s 79 years old.
Look, I’m not a teenager, I get that. I’m a proud Atari Wave Gen Xer. So I wasn’t 18 and then I was told I was listening to AARP tunes. But does Spotify realize how 22 years older my listening age seems than I actually am?
How old am I again?
Lawrence Welk talks about my speed, according to Spotify. Notice the giant GERITOL ad in the background.
I’m not the only one getting ahead of Spotify. My 18 year old daughter was told she was 37, probably because of her love of 90s emo. Some people get older – my colleague Corinne Reichert’s 73-year-old mother is rated 21. (“She listens to a lot of K-pop,” says her daughter.)
Spotify has classified my colleague John Skillings as an octogenarian aged 86, “because you have been interested in music since the late 1950s”. Blame his passion for jazz and a healthy dose of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington for his vocal journeys. At least Spotify had the good sense to play Count Basie’s 1957 version of April in Paris when it made the news.
“I’m not going to lie. 86 was a little bit painful,” Skillings says. “I really thought I was mixing a lot of tunes from this century.”
For the record, Spotify has named a 2024 release by contemporary jazz pianist Vijay Iyer as his best album. “See?” He says. “I can keep up with the times.”
But Skillings seems like a spring chicken next to CNET’s Ty Pendlebury, who wrote our lead Spotify Wrapped article revealing that Spotify bluntly told him he was 100 years old.
I may be old, but I got to see all the great bands
Prince in the 80s, when I saw him live for the first time.
I know that 79 is not that old for a lot of people. I lost my sister Claudia last December at the age of 78, and her ghost will haunt me forever if I speak of an age she never had a chance to complain about. But there’s something shocking about seeing someone 22 years older than you, especially when it comes to music, where the industry is always relying on some exciting new young singers.
Do I really care? Maybe I shouldn’t. There’s a t-shirt that says something like, “I may be old, but I gotta see all the great bands.” It’s probably made for baby boomers, but as an Xer who watched Prince live in his hometown of Minneapolis in his best decade, the 1980s, I proudly agree with that observation.
I’ve seen some old people in concert, yeah, I can’t deny that. Two years ago, I saw Steely Dan at an outdoor amphitheater near Seattle. (No constant.) I saw folk legend Pete Seeger perform with Arlo Guthrie at the University of Minnesota one year. I had my mother, born in the 1920s, and my brother, born in 1944, with me, and we were all immersed. There were kids jumping on their parents’ laps at that show. Pete and Arlo’s music has known no age. As an 80s concert goer, I saw bands like The Pet Shop Boys, REM, U2, Redd Kross, The Church, and The Pixies.
But as a mother of a teenage daughter, I’ve been overwhelmed by modern music, and I love it, too. Thanks to her, I saw Panic! At the Disco, Alex G, Car Seat Headrest, Melanie Martinez, Slaughter Beach, Doug. It’s not easy to classify my daughter either. She’s in an emo mode these days, listening to music before she was born, and watched My Chemical Romance kick off their Long Live The Black Parade tour, where they performed their 2006 album The Black Parade in its entirety.
How does Spotify determine your listening age?
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in Completely Unknown. After I saw the movie, I started listening to a lot of Dylan’s 1960s music on Spotify, which may be why Spotify thinks I’m 79 years old.
Spotify claims I’m 79 years old when I listen, not because I sit and watch reruns of the Lawrence Welk Show, but because “I’ve been interested in music since the early 1960s.”
I think my Spotify music age had a lot to do with watching the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and suddenly deciding that Spotify was the perfect way to follow Dylan’s music. I was a bit early for my peak, even though I lived near the famous Highway 61, where God said to Abraham: Kill me a son. Well, I watched the movie and it gave me some Dylan songs on Spotify.
So why don’t you give me a contract instead of a lifetime? I was born in the 60s, so being called a 60s kid would be fine by me. (My birth year is 6-7, which should be a popular year for Gen Z and Alpha.) I developed my music taste in Minneapolis in the 80s, with Prince, The Alternatives, Husker Du, and The Suburbs, so call me an 80s kid and I’ll put this sucker on a t-shirt and show it off.
I’ve decided that I will wear my Spotify life with pride. No one should be pushed into the music pit; There are great tunes from every decade, if you’re open enough to listen to them, and an 80-year-old can listen to anyone they choose. I’m proud that my musical tastes are not narrowly defined by my year of birth, but instead are open and broad.
So you’ll excuse me if I look at Spotify calling me 79 and quote an iconic song from Generation X’s mentors, Nirvana:
Oh well, whatever, it doesn’t matter.