“Age is merely a number, so try not to take it to heart.” Those words were my first signal that I was about to encounter some troubling news.
After celebrating my 44th birthday on Wednesday, I woke up nursing a slight hangover. Unfortunately for me, that day was also when Spotify unveiled its “Spotify Wrapped,” a breakdown of the 4,863 minutes (in my case) I spent enjoying music on their platform over the last year. For the first time, they introduced a feature calculating the “listening age” of all users.
“You can’t define your musical taste,” the Spotify report informed me. “But let’s give it a shot… Your hearing age is 86.” The figure flashed on the screen in bold pink letters.
It took my 13-year-old daughter (listening age: 19) and my 46-year-old husband (listening age: 38) quite a while to stop chuckling at my expense. I felt much older than my 44 years, pondering where I had gone wrong.
But it seems I’m not alone. “Raise your hand if you feel personally attacked by the Spotify Wrapped listening age,” one user remarked on X. Another post featured a humorous video of Judi Dench exclaiming “not young” at Cate Blanchett, which has garnered over 26,000 likes. The 22-year-old actor Louis Partridge perfectly captured my sentiments when he shared on his Instagram Stories that his listening age was 100, captioned: “Ugh.”
“Rage bait” (defined as online content crafted to provoke anger to boost web traffic) has been designated as the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. To me, that cheeky message from Spotify advising me to not take personal assessments of my listening habits felt like a prime example of this.
“How can I still enjoy it at 86?” I was infuriated with my family and friends, questioning whether my most listened-to artist this year was the 26-year-old Sabrina Carpenter. After taking my daughter to Carpenter’s concert in Hyde Park this summer, I had listened to her tracks for 722 minutes, placing me “in the top 3% of fans worldwide.”
The only justification Spotify provided for my 86-year listening age was that I “embraced late 50s music” this year. Yet, my top 10 songs were all released within the last five years, and my top five artists included Olivia Dean and Chapel Lawn (who just released her debut album in 2023).
Sure, Ella Fitzgerald is among them. But her music is eternal, which made me even angrier. “Isn’t it true that everyone listens to Ella Fitzgerald?” I questioned. “That’s not accurate,” my daughter kindly retorted. “No way,” my husband added.
It’s also true that I occasionally enjoy folk music from the legendary 50s and 60s, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. However, when we examined the top 50 “most listened to” songs, almost all of them (80%) were from the last five years.
What’s particularly aggravating is that Spotify recognizes my musical preferences as “eclectic.” That’s how they characterize my tastes. Apparently, I listened to 210 genres and 409 artists this past year.
None of this holds any weight until we see how much Spotify benefits from triggering the outrage of users like me. Within the first 24 hours, this year’s Wrapped campaign saw 500 million shares across social media, marking a 41% increase from last year.
According to Spotify, the concept of listening age stems from the “reminiscence bump,” which they describe as “the tendency for individuals to connect most with music from their youth.” To determine this, they analyzed the release dates of all the songs I played this year and identified five years of music that resonated with me more than with other listeners my age, then “jokingly” suggested that I share the same age as those who enjoyed that music during its prime.
In other words, irrespective of your actual age, the more unique, peculiar, and outdated your musical preferences are compared to others, the more likely Spotify will mock some of the tracks you love.
But now that you comprehend this, you know precisely how to respond instead of falling for the bait. I approach a dusty old CD player. I insert a beloved CD I bought during my teenage years. I crank the volume to maximum and then play one of my favorite tracks. This song is Ella Fitzgerald’s “You Make Me Feel So Young,” a tune that every listener over the age of 86 surely knows by heart, just like I do.
Source: www.theguardian.com
