11

Last week, Spotify released its 2025 “Wrapped” narrative for each of its listeners. It’s one of my favorite features of Spotify, and I know that many fellow Spotify users agree. Spotify stated on X that it was their “biggest Wrapped ever, with 200 million engaged users and 500 million shares on social media within 24 hours.”

Spotify listeners are given data about their favorite artists, songs and the number of musical genres which they’ve consumed. Not surprisingly, Spotify informed me that my favorite artist was BTS, and my favorite genre is K-pop. I’m now in the top 3 percent of BTS listeners, but that is down from last year. However, my most-listened song was Super Junior’s “Magic,” followed by BTS’s “Just One Day,” SF9’s “Together,” “Trivia: Just Dance” by BTS/J-Hope, “It’s You” by Super Junior — further down the list one can find “Hearts” by Martin Balin, and “I Just Want to be Your Everything” by Andy Gibb.

Spotify states, “Age is just a number, so don’t take this personally,” and calculated my listening age as 27! I guess I should be happy about that and owe a debt of gratitude to K-pop.

In fact, Spotify wrapped and our listening age became a primary topic of conversation at our end-of-the-semester gathering with the students of my K-pop class. We began comparing our listening ages and speculating on why Spotify classified us in this way.

Following the discussion I had with my students, I wanted to learn about the music they consumed this year. I share some of this information with their permission. All of the students below are first-year students at Yale University and approximately 18 years old.

Samantha Chu reported a listening age of 18, perfectly matching her biological age. Her listening tastes closely align with the top newer K-pop groups Seventeen, Zerobaseone, Tomorrow X Together, Enhypen and P1Harmony.

Aileen Zhao reported that Spotify identified her listening age as 20. Similar to Chu, her top artists were Seventeen, Tomorrow x Together, Enhypen, Laufey and BSS (Seventeen subunit with DK, Hoshi and Seungkwan).

Chris Cho told me that Spotify identified his listening age as 21, but he reported artists such as Ray Chen, Yung Kai and Wallows.

An anonymous student also reported a listening age of 21 and her top artists were a list of K-pop and Western artists. They include &Team, Laufey, Enhyphen, Twice and Ariana Grande.

Several students were identified with a slightly older listening age. Timothy Leung reported a listening age of 24. His top artists were pop singers Taylor Swift, Sza, Ariana Grande, Noah Kahan and Keshi. Connor White was also identified by Spotify as having a listening age of 24, but he listed very different artists — Joji, Keshi, Clairo, Wallows and Novulent. Wallows was also on Cho’s list above. While they are young artists, they reminded me of earlier dreampop and Britpop bands.

Another anonymous student listed his listening age as 29, and his top artists were Tame Impala, The Weeknd, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Adawa.

Dougie Boardman, a first-year student at Yale, reported that his listening age was 85, and suspected that this was “likely because I listen to a lot of jazz and classical music.” His top 5 artists were indie acts The Symposium, Mac DeMarco and Her’s, along with classic rock groups Pink Floyd and The Band. However, Boardman was not the oldest in our class. Another student told me that because she listened to a lot of classical music, her listening age was 93. After all, Frederic Chopin was popular starting in the 1830s.

So, how was Spotify’s “listening age” calculated? According to a Vanity Fair article by Kase Wickman, Spotify uses something called the “reminiscence bump,” which is the idea that you are most attached to music from your youth. They assume that these formative years are between “16 and 21.” On Spotify’s page, it states that the listening age narrative “compares your musical tastes to others’ in your age group, looking at the release years of the tracks you listen to most.”

Psychologist Erik Erikson and sociologist James C. Coleman both stressed the importance of adolescence in learning and practicing roles in preparation for adulthood — this is why this period of life is so important in our individual development and why many of us still love the songs from our adolescence.

When I sit in my 50-something-year-old sister Mary’s car, it’s as if I am back in high school — I hear 80s songs by groups like Duran Duran, Huey Lewis and the News, Genesis, Tears for Fears and Howard Jones. So, it didn’t surprise me that her Spotify Wrapped listening age was 57. What did surprise me was that her top genre was now K-pop. I guess I’ve had a positive effect on her after all. Just a bit more K-pop might make her young again in the eyes of Spotify Wrapped!

Grace Kao

Grace Kao is an IBM professor of sociology and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale University. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.