Spotify Wrapped is a fun annual roundup of your listening habits throughout the year. And every year, Music streaming app By adding new features, like in 2023, when it assigned people a Sound Town, meaning a city that matches their listening style. Spotify Wrapped was released on Wednesday, and this year’s new features include a multiplayer game, Wrapped Party and listening ages.
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 not a tinkerer, I get it. I am a proud Atari Wave Gen Xer. So it’s not like I was 18 and was told I was listening to AARP tunes. But does Spotify understand what it’s like to strike a chord with listeners 22 years older than me?
How old am I again?
I’m not the only one who thinks Spotify is getting old. My 18-year-old daughter was told she was 37, probably because of her love of 1990s emo. Some people get younger — my colleague Corinne Reichert’s 73-year-old mother is 21. (“He listens to a lot of K-pop,” says his daughter.)
Spotify pegs my colleague John Skillings as an octogenarian with an audience age of 86, “since you’ve been in music since the late ’50s.” Blame his passion for jazz and a healthy dose of Miles Davis and Duke Ellington on his sonic journey. At least Spotify had the good taste to play the April 1957 version of Count Basie in Paris when it delivered the news.
“I’m not going to lie. That 86 stung a little bit,” Skillings said. “I really thought I was mixing in a lot more tunes from this century.”
For the record, Spotify has released 2024 from contemporary jazz pianist Vijay Iyer as its top album. “See?” “I can keep up with the times,” he said.
But Skillings looks like a spring chicken next to CNET’s Ty Pendlebury, who Wrote our Spotify wrap article And revealed that Spotify clearly told him he was 100.
I may be old, but I got to see all the cool bands
I know 79 is not old to many. I lost my sister Claudia last December at 78, and her ghost will haunt me forever if I get snippy about an age she hasn’t even had a chance to complain about. But there’s something surprising about looking 22 years older than you, especially in music, where the industry is always riding on some new young singer.
Do I really care? Maybe I shouldn’t. There’s a t-shirt that says something like, “I may be old, but I’ve seen all the great bands.” It’s probably made for baby boomers, but as a czar who saw Prince live in Minneapolis in his prime, the 1980s, I proudly identify with that comment.
I saw some seniors at the concert, yes, can’t deny it. A few years ago, I saw Steely Dan at an outdoor amphitheater near Seattle. (No static.) I saw folk legend Pete Seeger perform one year with Arlo Guthrie at the University of Minnesota. My mother, born in the 1920s, and my brother, a child born in 1944, were with me and we were all delighted. The show had kids jumping on their parents‘ laps. Pete and Arlo’s music knew no age. And as a 1980s concert-goer, I saw bands like The Pet Shop Boys, REM, U2, Redd Kross, The Church and the Pixies.
Spotify Says I Have a 79-Year-Old’s Music Taste
But as a mother of a teenage daughter, I am inundated with more modern music and love it too. Thanks for that, I saw Panic! At the Disco, Alex G, Car Seat Headrest, Melanie Martinez and Slaughter Beach, Dog. And he’s not easy to categorize, either. He’s in an emo groove these days, and saw My Chemical Romance embark on 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?
Spotify claims my listening age is 79, not because I sit down to reruns of The Lawrence Welk Show, but because I’ve “been into music since the early ’60s.”
I think my Spotify musical age has a lot to do with watching the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown and suddenly deciding that Spotify was the right way to catch Dylan’s music. I was too early for his life, even though I lived just off the famous Highway 61, where God told Abraham, slay me a son. Okay, so I watched the movie, and I majored me some Dylan.
So why not hand over a decade instead of my age? I was born in the 60s, so it would be fair for me to be called a child of the ’60s. (My birth years are 6-7, which should be a popular year for Gen Z and Alpha.) I grew up in Minneapolis in the 1980s with Prince, The Replacements, Husker Doo and The Suburbs, so call me an 80s baby and I’ll put that sucker on a t-shirt and flaunt it.
I’ve decided I’m going to wear my Spotify Age proudly. No one should be pigeonholed into musical instruments; Every decade has great tunes, if you’re open enough to listen, and an 80-year-old can hear what they like. I’m proud that my musical tastes are not narrowly defined by the year I was born, but instead, open and vast.