Nina Chae-Gordon is 26 years old.
However, Spotify thinks she is older. In fact, more than half a century older. Based on his listening habits this year, the streaming platform considered Chae-Gordon to be, musically speaking, 89 years old.
This assessment was part of Spotify Wrapped, the platform’s annual summary of users’ listening habits, which presents data on how many times users have listened to certain songs and artists. This year, the report also included a so-called “musical age”.
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“If you listen to a lot more music from the late 1970s than other people your age, we joke that your ‘musical age’ today is 63, the age of someone who would have been in their formative years in the late 1970s,” Spotify explained in a statement.
Chae-Gordon, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, said she was surprised by the result, as her favorite artists of the year were contemporary, such as singer Olivia Dean and the funky, vibe-filled trio Khruangbin.
She thought her work in public relations on Broadway might have influenced this older age. Chae-Gordon said she took time this year to listen to artists like Bobby Darin and Connie Francis while working on the 1960s jukebox musical “Just in Time.”
On social media, many Spotify users had mixed reactions to the assigned ages. Some wore their age as a badge of honor, a display of refinement. (Experimental artist Grimes posted her musical age on Platform X: 92.) Others, whose Spotify ages were younger, blamed their children’s tastes.
Jenni Byrne-Mosley, 41, who works in architectural carpentry, said her 10-year-old son’s preference for indie video game soundtracks likely led to his Spotify-assigned age of 30. The platform allows users to exclude certain playlists from year-end results, Byrne-Mosley said, but her attempts to keep her Wrapped “clean” have been unsuccessful.
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Musical Age follows a recent Spotify tradition of releasing flashy features, based on loose data, designed to encourage users to share results on social media and engage in conversations with friends and strangers.
In 2023, Spotify placed listeners in cities around the world based on music taste. Some users felt at home in their assigned location—this reporter’s “sound city” was, in fact, New York—but others were perplexed about how their listening habits correlated, for example, with Burlington, Vermont.
In 2022, many users laughed after Wrapped’s text described his taste in music as “like an onion.”
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Payman Kassaie, global brand director at Spotify, said the Wrapped team suspected the musical age would provoke strong reactions.
“You always know which stories are going to be exciting, because when we first get our own data, what else do we talk about?” said Kassaie, describing a meeting where his team was assigned their own musical ages. “There was such a stark contrast between all the people in this meeting that it seemed really indicative of their personalities.”
Kassaie’s assigned age was 17.
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“It was a little embarrassing,” he said. “I listen to Playboi Carti a lot.”
While some users reacted with embarrassment, others reported feeling unexpected emotions as a result of their Spotify results.
Annie Rauwerda, 26, said her musical age was 79, a number she attributed to the time she spent this year listening to “Laurel Canyon folk from the 60s and 70s.”
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Rauwerda, who lives in New York’s Brooklyn neighborhood and runs @depthsofwikipedia, an Instagram account that chronicles curiosities from the online encyclopedia, said she quickly realized she wasn’t the only one in her circle who, in terms of musical taste, was nearly 80 years old.
She discovered her ex-boyfriend’s musical age was also 79 after seeing his Instagram story. The two, who remain friends, spoke on the phone shortly afterwards to discuss.
“It made us miss each other,” she said.
