“Age is only a quantity. So don’t take this personally.” These phrases have been the primary inkling I had that I used to be about to obtain some very dangerous information.
I awakened on Wednesday with a light hangover after celebrating my forty fourth birthday. Sadly for me, this was the day Spotify launched “Spotify Wrapped”, its evaluation of (in my case) the 4,863 minutes I had spent listening to music on its platform over the previous yr. And this yr, for the primary time, they’re calculating the “listening age” of all their customers.
“Style like yours can’t be outlined,” Spotify’s report knowledgeable me, “however let’s strive anyway … Your listening age is 86.” The numbers have been emblazoned on the display screen in huge pink letters.
It took a very long time for my 13-year-old daughter (listening age: 19) and my 46-year-old husband (listening age: 38) to cease laughing at me. The place did I am going incorrect, I questioned, feeling far older than 44.
However it appears I’m not alone. “Increase your hand when you felt personally victimised by your Spotify Wrapped listening age,” wrote one consumer on X. One other put up, with a brutal clip of Judi Dench shouting “you’re not younger” at Cate Blanchett, was preferred greater than 26,000 occasions. The 22-year-old actor Louis Partridge greatest mirrored my response when he shared his listening age of 100 on Instagram tales with the caption: “uhhh”.
“Rage bait” – outlined as “on-line content material intentionally designed to elicit anger or outrage” so as to improve net site visitors – is the Oxford English Dictionary’s phrase of the yr. And to me, that cheeky little message from Spotify, warning me to not take my personalised evaluation of my private listening habits personally, appeared a chief instance.
“How might I’ve a listening age of 86?” I raged to my household and mates, when the artist I listened to probably the most this yr was 26-year-old Sabrina Carpenter? Since I took my daughter to Carpenter’s live performance at Hyde Park this summer time, I’ve spent 722 minutes listening to her songs, making me “a high 3% international fan”.
The one rationalization Spotify gave for my listening age of 86 was that I used to be “into music of the late 50s” this yr. However my high 10 most-listened to songs have been all launched up to now 5 years and my high 5 artists included Olivia Dean and Chappell Roan (who launched their debut albums in 2023).
Admittedly, Ella Fitzgerald is in there too. However her music is timeless, I raged; absolutely everybody listens to Ella Fitzgerald? “I don’t,” my daughter mentioned, helpfully. “I don’t,” added my husband.
It’s additionally true that I often take heed to folks music from the 50s and 60s – legends reminiscent of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. However after I analysed my high 50 “most listened to” songs, virtually all of them (80%) have been launched within the final 5 years.
What’s notably enraging is that Spotify is aware of my style is greatest described as “eclectic” – as a result of that’s how Spotify has described it to me. I’ve apparently listened to 409 artists in 210 music genres over the previous yr.
None of it is sensible, till you see the extent to which inciting rage in customers like me is paying off for Spotify: within the first 24 hours, this yr’s Wrapped marketing campaign had 500 million shares on social media, a 41% improve on final yr.
In accordance with Spotify, listening ages are primarily based on the thought of a “memory bump”, which they describe as “the tendency to really feel most related to the music out of your youthful years”. To determine this out, they appeared on the launch dates of all of the songs I performed this yr, recognized the five-year span of music that I engaged with greater than different listeners my age and “playfully” hypothesised that I’m the identical age as somebody who engaged with that music of their childhood.
In different phrases, regardless of how outdated you might be, the extra uncommon and idiosyncratic and out of step your musical style is in contrast along with your friends, the extra probably it’s that Spotify will poke enjoyable at a few of the music you get pleasure from listening to.
However now that I perceive this, reasonably than rising to the bait, I do know precisely what to do. I stroll over to my dusty, historic CD participant. I insert an outdated CD I purchased after I was a teen. I flip the quantity as much as max. After which I play one in every of my favorite songs, a basic tune that everybody who has a listening age of 86 or over will know, like I do, off by coronary heart: You Make Me Really feel So Younger by Ella Fitzgerald.