Spotify Wrapped’s new ‘Listening Age’ feature — which compares one’s musical tastes to others’ in their age group by looking at the release years of the tracks listened to most — has come as a delight to music lovers across all generations, sparking hilarious memes and discussions on social media.

The ‘Listening Age’ feature was recently added to this year’s Spotify Wrapped, which is an annual, personalised recap that visualises one’s listening habits, top music, and audio trends at the end of the year.

The feature does not estimate one’s actual age. Instead, it measures how “old” one’s musical taste is. Instead of birthdays, Spotify looks at the release years of the songs a person has listened to over the year. Then the algorithm finds a 5-year span of music — the time period of songs one has consumed more than others in their age group. It maps the music taste to the era someone aged between 16 and 21 would have grown up with.

That mapped age is one’s “Listening Age.” If a person has streamed a lot of late ’70s music, their listening age might be less than 63, since a 63-year-old would have been a teenager or a young adult when those songs first came out.

Social media has been in awe of the feature ever since Spotify Wrapped came out on 3 December. From hilarious posts about music lovers having no taste in music if their listening age is under forty to existential memes that tickle the ribs, netizens are abuzz with reactions.

While some joked about being “musically ancient”, others were shocked at getting ages vastly different from their real ones and debating whether the feature is flattering, insulting, or just entertaining.

“If your Spotify wrapped listening age is anything less than 40 you have ZERO taste in music,” wrote an X user cheekily.

Another netizen shared a post, saying, “I think if your listening age on Spotify Wrapped is older than your actual age it’s cool and good and it makes you intelligent and interesting. If your listening age is below your actual age you need a psychiatric evaluation to understand why you’re the way that you are.”

“When spotify wrapped tells me my music listening age is 21 (I’m 43),” came another tweet.

“Everybody keeps laughing when I tell them my spotify wrapped listening age,” wrote a music lover on X.

“Playing music at work had my Spotify Wrapped all messed up this year. It had my listening age at 61,” an X user regretted.

A music enthusiast sarcastically said that they have started listening to the Australian children's music group The Wiggles just to get the number down next year.

An X user, who does not use Spotify, shared, “I don’t use Spotify so I didn’t get to look at Spotify wrapped so I asked my friends to tell me what my music taste age is and they said 80 because all I’ve been listening to is really old Christmas music.”

Apart from Listening Age, this year’s Spotify Wrapped introduces several new features like Top Albums, highlighting the albums you revisited most; a Fan Leaderboard showing how you rank among an artist’s global listeners; Clubs, which sort you into one of six listening-style communities; an AI-powered Listening Archive that presents personalised snapshots of your most memorable days of streaming; and Wrapped Party, a new interactive, competitive experience you can play with friends using your own listening data.