Right, this is exactly how Spotify Wrapped 2025 calculates your Listening Age

Spotify Wrapped 2025 is finally here and the Listening Age feature is confusing everyone. Brand new for this year, the music recap tool gives you an age based on what music you’ve been enjoying, but the results are a bit strange.

People have been getting all kinds of ages from 17 to 91 that don’t seem related to your music taste at all. One person’s top two artists were Mariah Carey and Madonna, and they got a listening age of 18 even though they were big artists in the 80s and 90s. Make that make sense?!

Thankfully, Spotify has explained exactly how your Listening Age is calculated, and it turns out it’s not based on how old the artists you listen to are after all.

Spotify wrapped! My listening age being 79 with these top artists and albums😭 pic.twitter.com/j50pkO6svO

— h (@m_dneh) December 3, 2025

This is how Spotify Wrapped 2025 comes up with your Listening Age

Your Spotify Wrapped Listening Age is based on something the music streaming app calls a “reminiscence bump,” which they describe as the “tendency to feel most connected to the music from your younger years”.

They use these steps to calculate your Listening Age:

• First, Spotify looks at the release dates of all of the songs you played from January 2025 to mid-November 2025.
• Then, they identify the five-year span of music that you engaged with more than other listeners your age.
• Spotify hypothesises that this five-year span matches your “reminiscence bump,” assuming you were between 16 and 21 years old when those tracks were released.
• Here’s an example. If you listen to more music from the late 1970s than others your age, your  Listening Age would be 63 today, the age of someone who would have been a child years in the late 1970s.

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It’s all a bit confusing, but all you really need to know is Spotify’s Listening Age is basically comparing your musical taste to other people in your age group.

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Featured image by: Spotify