The app that tells us what we’re like – but should we be using it?

An app I use every day (and there’s a good chance you use it too) says it can show us who we are, it can put a mirror up to our ‘moments, moods and memories’, it will be the ‘real story’, uniquely ours. And so, because I’m weak, I press the button and let the app do its thing and it comes back and tells me I’m 58 years old. 58? Bloody cheek! I’m 55 and three-quarters.

The app in question, Spotify, made the guess at my age based on my tastes in music, audiobooks and podcasts because for the last 12 months it’s been keeping track of my music, audiobooks and podcasts and is now passing judgment. No doubt I allowed the app to do it when I didn’t read the terms and conditions, which is a reminder of how often, and how casually, we permit stuff like this to happen while also complaining about cameras and ID cards and the surveillance society. In case you hadn’t noticed, we lost the argument years ago, to our phones.

But let’s not get too serious yet. No doubt the data Spotify collects is useful to the people who run it because it means they can more effectively target us with stuff they think we’ll like and therefore keep us hooked on the app. But the annual recap of our listening habits that guessed I was 58, Spotify Wrapped, isn’t something a lot of us worry about because, even though it told me I’m middle-aged, it flatters us: it tells us that the sort of stuff we like, the music, the books, our cultural choices, is really interesting. And it also happens to get things right.

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Because, as Spotify correctly observed, my musical taste absolutely dates me as a fiftysomething. At number one in my most-played in 2025 was Morrissey, with The Smiths at No5. My top album was Power Corruption and Lies by New Order. And even the new stuff I listened to like Nation of Language (American indie band – very good – check them out) is influenced by 80s indie and post-punk. Our musical tastes can often go off on all kinds of branches over the years, but the roots are formed between the ages of 10 and 20 or thereabouts and never really shift. In my case, it all happened down at The Pop Inn record shop on Sinclair Road in Aberdeen. Hang on while I shut my eyes and see the place in every detail. It’s a barber shop now but if you could get your hair cut online that would be gone too.

There will be some who blame apps like Spotify entirely for the death of the record shops and the decline in physical media. There are also those who rage against it for the amount it pays to artists (about $0.003 per stream) or how it spends its money (there was controversy about co-founder Daniel Ek’s investment in a German defence company) or whose adverts they run (recruitment ads for the US Immigration Service for example). There are also some who worry that it could lead to the death of real music completely because of the growth in AI-generated stuff. In the age of anger, it gets some people very angry indeed.

But anyone who complains about Spotify, or who tries to insist on a kind of commercial purity from their music, clearly doesn’t know their rock history. In the hey-day of the old record companies, artists were exploited, there was financial mismanagement and corruption, sexual exploitation and abuse; George Michael famously likened his contract to “professional slavery”. My point is that if you insist on music produced only by companies that align with your values, in the age of Spotify or the age before it, then there isn’t going to be much music playing at your house. Rubbish party.

As for physical media, you won’t find a bigger fan of it than me – most of the movies and books, and some of the music, I buy is physical, it exists (and vinyl sales are actually doing very well). But the point of Spotify, the point of all successful companies in a system that offers services in exchange for money, is that it works, it’s convenient, people like it, it fits into our lives in the way that CD players and Sony Walkmans and record players used to, so people are prepared to pay for it. It’s why boycotts never work if people want what the company is selling.

And so I’ll continue to pay for my Spotify (even though it just called me old). And I’m going to enjoy Spotify Wrapped because it told me in an entertaining way what I already knew: that I am what I always was and always will be, and the soundtrack to it is Morrissey and The Smiths and New Order. Spotify Wrapped tells me that I spent the evening of November 8th listening to Morrissey, Smiths and a Brahms symphony (sounds like my kind of night) and that my most “Morrissey heavy day of the year” was April 23 (I wonder what was happening that day?)

Spotify Wrapped reminds me of something else good as well, which is that we feel our best when we indulge in our obsessions without shame or judgment. The app tells me that I listened to 18,400 minutes of podcasts in 2025, including The Rest is History (excellent) and The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast (splendid), and that 15,163 of those minutes (10 days!) was spent listening to The Krynoid Podcast.

In case you haven’t heard of it, let me tell you about The Krynoid Podcast. It is two grown men called Jim and Martin (who are also aged around 58) analysing classic episodes of Doctor Who minute by minute, minutiae by minutiae, menoptera by menoptera. You may think that’s sad; you may think it’s tragic; you may think I could’ve spent those 10 days doing something more productive or useful to society. But the great thing about Spotify is that it doesn’t judge. In fact, it indulges my obsessions and even encourages them and suggests where I can get some more of it. It is an enabler, an accomplice, and at the end of the year it wraps it all up and shows me who I am. And I love it. Carry on.