Spotify Wrapped is a fun annual roundup of your listening habits. Every year, the music streaming app adds new features, like back in 2023, when it assigned people a Sound Town, meaning a city that supposedly matched their listening style. The Spotify Wrapped for 2025 just landed on Wednesday, and new features this year include a multiplayer game called Wrapped Party and an in-your-face assessment of your listening age.
That last one blew my mind a little. My actual age is 57. According to Spotify, my listening age is 79.
SEVENTY-NINE.
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President Donald Trump and former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are 79. Liza Minnelli is 79. Cher -- well, she's ageless, but technically, she's 79.
Look, I'm no teenybopper, I get it. I'm a proud Atari Wave Gen Xer. So it's not like I was 18 and was then told I was listening to AARP tunes. But does Spotify realize how it sounds to be hit with a listening age that's 22 years older than I really am?
What's my age again?
Lawrence Welk is about my speed, according to Spotify. Note giant GERITOL ad in the background. ABC Photo Archives /Getty Images
I'm not the only one Spotify is aging up. My 18-year-old daughter was told she was 37, maybe because of her love of 1990s emo. Some people get aged down -- my colleague Corinne Reichert's 73-year-old mom was labeled 21. ("She listens to a lot of K-pop," her daughter says.)
Spotify pegged my colleague Jon Skillings as an octogenarian, with a listening age of 86, "since you were into music from the late '50s." Blame that on his passion for jazz and a healthy dose of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington in his sonic excursions. At least Spotify had the good taste to play Count Basie's 1957 version of April in Paris when it delivered the news.
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