What is your Spotify 'Listening Age', and how is it calculated?

WORDS Kirsty Thatcher PUBLISHED Thu, 4 Dec 2025 - 8:08 am

Spotify Wrapped has dropped for 2025 — which means our social media feeds are set to be flooded with listening stats for the foreseeable future.

But this year, beyond the usual top artists and genres, Wrapped has slipped in a surprising new metric: Listening Age. And most surprising of all? For many people, it’s declaring them significantly older than they actually are. Think: Gen Z discovering their taste apparently peaked somewhere around 1970.

Want to know how Spotify calculated your listening age? Everything we know about this new Wrapped feature, below.

So, what is Spotify’s Listening Age?

Listening Age is Spotify Wrapped’s newest metric — an attempt to tell you how old your taste sounds. Basically, instead of focusing on how long you listened or who you streamed the most, it zeroes in on the era of music you gravitate toward.

And yes, for most people, it’s pegging them as older than they actually are.

According to Spotify, Listening Age is based on a psychological concept called the "reminiscence bump", the phenomenon that we feel most emotionally connected to music we heard between ages 16 and 21. Spotify takes this idea and tries to reverse-engineer which era you’re “nostalgically aligned” with.

How is your Listening Age calculated?

Spotify hasn’t released the full formula (Wrapped thrives on a little mystery), but here’s what we do know based on their breakdown.

1. Spotify analyses the release dates of every song you streamed in 2025

2. They identify the five-year span of music you over-indexed on

This means the era you listened to more than other listeners your age. So if you’re 23 but constantly streaming 2006 tracks, Spotify notices.

3. They map that era onto the “reminiscence bump” ages (16–21)

Spotify assumes the era you’re most drawn to corresponds to the formative years of someone older (or younger) than you.

4. That becomes your Listening Age

For example: If you listened heavily to late-’70s records, Wrapped might label you with the Listening Age of a 63-year-old today — not literally, but metaphorically, because that’s the age of someone who was 16–21 during that era.