How Do Music Listening Habits Change With Age?

Intro: How Many Times Can I Listen to the Same Song?

I am sick of my own music. Every day, I go to work, write my Python code, and (while coding) listen to My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” or Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” for the 1,000th time. Then I clock out, ready to do it all over again, playing these songs for the 1,001st time.

Every once in a while, I’ll get a rush of inspiration and try a new streaming service or playlist. A minute into this endeavor, I’ll feel like a golden god. “I’m so brave,” I’ll think to myself. “I should tell people about how brave I’m being.” Within ten minutes, I’ll typically lose all momentum and return to my well-worn playlists and channels.

A few years back, I explored the difficulties of song discovery as we age and found that our music tastes are largely shaped during adolescence, with so-called “open-earedness” declining after our mid-twenties.

Initially, I found this data comforting. It turns out I am just like everyone else—readily bingeing music played at my middle school dances.

But my acceptance of this phenomenon can only go so far. I still go to work every day, write my Python code, and listen to “Dancing in the Dark”—and I’ll probably keep doing this for a few more decades.

Am I unique in my relentless song repetition, or am I, once again, the norm? How does music consumption change as it becomes harder to discover new songs? And how do these phenomena intersect with music’s role in the workplace?

So today, we’ll explore our ever-evolving relationship with music amid declining “open-earedness” and examine how our streaming habits shift as our tastes narrow.

How Do Listening Habits Change Over Time?

AccuRadio is a free, human-curated internet radio service offering over 1,000 customizable music channels. I’ve consulted for the platform on several data projects, and they’ve generously provided anonymized user data for this analysis.

As a streaming listener (AccuRadio or otherwise), you generally have two responsibilities:

1. Choose a playlist, artist, or channel
2. Once presented with a song, you decide whether you’d like to listen or skip

If this sounds overwhelming, you can skip step #1 by throwing on Spotify’s AI DJ—ceding music selection to a large language model masquerading as a human disc jockey—which is modernity at its best. Once a channel is launched, the streaming experience becomes an all-you-can-eat buffet offering every song in human history—all you have to do is say “yay” or “nay.”

Streaming services like AccuRadio track song “skips” and “plays” as well as user age (when provided). Using this data, I analyzed listener “skip” percentages across various age groups.

My initial hypothesis was that song-skipping would increase over time. I envisioned a world of hardened Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers, and elder Millennials continuously rejecting new-fangled tracks foreign to their significantly less “open” ears. Turns out the opposite is true—younger listeners skip songs more often.

This finding sent me into a minor tailspin. Was my previous research completely wrong? Are younger music consumers closed-minded, while older listeners simply accept the songs served to them by algorithms and editorial teams? Not exactly.

Older listeners have lower skip rates because they put themselves in situations where they don’t need to skip songs. As someone with rapidly calcifying music tastes, I typically confine my streaming activities to a handful of trusted playlists and channels—because I like what I like. I just want to be soothed or distracted by creature comforts (is that so much to ask?!).

Alas, my lack of sonic exploration aligns with normative behavior, as the average listener samples fewer channels as they age.

Maturation begets a shrinking set of go-to channels and playlists. We don’t need to skip songs because we’ve heard them all before.

Our increasingly narrow tastes also take a peculiar shape in how we give feedback to our streaming platforms. AccuRadio lets users rate songs on a scale of 1 to 5. A “5” means you will hear that song more, and a “1” or “2” means the track is effectively banned from future listening sessions.

Counterintuitively, younger users—who are more likely to encounter novel tracks—assign higher song ratings on average.

How is this possible? How can this population skip more songs AND be more favorable in their feedback?

The difference lies in the permanence (or lack thereof) associated with skips and ratings.

• For Skips: Song-skipping has limited implications. Maybe you’re not in the mood for a given track, or you’ve grown tired of it recently. Perhaps you don’t love that song, but you’re unwilling to ban it permanently (i.e., you might learn to love Chappell Roan one day). I’ve skipped my favorite song several times because it didn’t feel right at that moment.
• For Ratings: Assigning a rating of “1” or “2” means you’re cleansing that track from your life (at least on that streaming service). Plus, I would only rate my favorite song once, giving it a 5, while readily assigning lower scores to several tracks I dislike. Ratings are a blunt instrument for music avoidance.

Younger streaming listeners tend to exhibit a “discovery mindset,” actively seeking novelty. In contrast, older listeners may approach streaming from a “maintenance mindset,” knowing what they want and using a given platform to reinforce established preferences.

But does a reduced appetite for sonic exploration also signal diminished interest in music (overall)? As our tastes narrow, do we listen to less music, or do we revel in the comfort of familiar channels and songs?

How Much Music Do We Listen to As We Age?

A quirk of this analysis is that it excludes a population not represented in our dataset. Since we’re analyzing data from a streaming platform, we’re missing the preferences of those who don’t regularly listen to music or use a streaming service. As such, these statistics are only representative of active streaming users. If someone has “quit” music—and I don’t even know what that means—they would not be represented here.

So, for those who’ve stayed dedicated to music (via streaming), how much do they listen?

Surprisingly, middle-aged streamers have higher weekly listening times and longer sessions.

These are my favorite types of analyses: the ones where I learn how little I know.

To recap our findings so far:

• Younger streaming listeners skip more songs and sample more channels while somehow consuming less music (relative to older streamer cohorts).
• Older streaming users sample fewer channels and are more likely to ban tracks that don't match their established tastes (via low star ratings), yet they listen to more music.

How is this possible? The answer centers on music’s role in our professional lives.

The working world introduces several situations where music is indispensable:

1. Commuting
2. Being bored at work
3. Drowning out loud coworkers
4. Long work bouts (coding, writing, strategizing, etc.)
5. Trying to inject joy into your day while doing activities 1, 2, 3, and 4, as well as all the time in between

To examine the interplay between streaming and working life, I analyzed hourly music consumption across various age cohorts.

Working-age groups (highlighted in blue) consume more music during work and commuting hours, while adolescents and retirees are more likely to stream at night.

This graph underscores the fluid nature of our lifelong listening habits. Music begins as a means of identity formation and cultural exploration, then becomes a practical tool for everyday life before ultimately returning to its purest purpose—entertainment.

I find this trajectory comforting. Consider my ever-evolving connection to Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” at each musical life stage:

• “Dancing in the Dark” Listen #1: I was an adolescent—around ten years old—raiding my dad’s music for classic rock gems. I sampled Bruce’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and was immediately transfixed by “Dancing in the Dark.” For the next few days, I consumed this song ad nauseam—like way too much—and experienced the joy of shaping my musical tastes.
• “Dancing in the Dark” Listen #1,000: I’m probably in the middle of an analysis—perhaps for this article—when “Dancing in the Dark” plays via a playlist in shuffle mode. I acknowledge the song and recognize it’s better than silence, then keep working while listening passively.
• “Dancing in the Dark” Listen #5,000: I am in my twilight years, retired and stinking rich (hopefully). I sip a flavorful mocktail whilst sitting beside a crackling fire and listening to the music of my youth. “Dancing in the Dark” plays, and I think, “What a nice song.” I take a moment to appreciate Springsteen’s impact on my life and my consistent affection for this song. Then I die.

Perhaps decades from now, I’ll no longer be sick of my music—listening for pure pleasure rather than contextual utility. That would be nice.

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Final Thoughts: The Agony and Ecstasy of Noise-Canceling Headphones

As someone prone to overanalyzing things, I often retrace the evolution of my listening habits to better understand my relationship with music. In the end, I always come back to two moments that forever reshaped my relationship with music.

1. Getting My First iPod: I won an iPod Mini at a school raffle—back when these gadgets were all the rage and Steve Jobs could force-install U2 albums on every device. I was captivated by my iPod Mini and spent countless hours on iTunes scouring for new tracks. At one point, I tried listening to my iPod while taking a bath, which led to the device getting wet, then breaking, and me throwing a tantrum. An endless world of music was available for sampling, and I spent every available hour in service of this quest.
2. Getting My First Job: My first job out of college was at a 30-person startup in an open-floor-plan office. Whenever someone spoke, the entire company heard the conversation. I was shocked: “How could adults be so disrespectful?” After a few days, the office manager pulled me aside and suggested I buy noise-canceling headphones. She explained that I couldn't do my work without music. How else could I concentrate? Thus began 8-hour workdays defined by Spotify, Pandora, and AccuRadio listening sessions.

Of course, this inflection point was unavoidable—people have to work, and novelty doesn’t last forever. Still, I’m troubled by my lack of agency. Can I infuse my music listening with a sense of freshness, or should I simply accept the realities of aging?

Should I go out of my way to sample new channels (and be brave!) while rating novel songs more favorably? Or should I deepen my appreciation for well-worn favorites, savoring every replay of “Welcome to the Black Parade” and “Californication”? And most importantly, if I choose one of these options, can I commit to it for more than two minutes?

No matter what, I eagerly await the day when, as an 80- or 90-year-old retiree, I rediscover my youthful passion for Bruce Springsteen, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and My Chemical Romance. At least I have that to look forward to.

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