Overanalysing our 2025 Spotify Wrapped: what MIDiA’s stats say about the industry

Nothing signifies the holiday season like snowy days, Christmas jingles – and for many of us, Spotify Wrapped. The streaming platform’s annual listenership stats are back, and so is MIDiA’s tradition of over-analysing them. For the third year in a row, we’re sharing MIDiA staff members’ own Wrapped data, and analysing what it might say about the state of music today.

Of course, this comes with the usual disclaimers. MIDiA’s staff of entertainment analysts are far from average consumers, and our sample size is far from significant. A total of 13 generous members of our staff – plus four friends and family members to help round out the sample – contributed their data to this year’s analysis. Nonetheless, our stats have tended to reflect broader trends taking shape in the industry. Here are our five biggest takeaways from Spotify Wrapped this year. 

1. We spent less time on Spotify in 2025 – and more on YouTube

Of the nine members of our sample who contributed their Wrapped figures in both 2024 and 2025, all but one saw their total listening time fall – and by an average of -25.1%. Nearly all of them said more of their music listening has migrated to YouTube in the last year, where they are often tuning in to DJ sets.

Most digital platforms, from Spotify to Netflix, see YouTube as a key competitor in the attention economy. Yet music streaming services typically worry about losing attention to YouTube content creators and podcasters – less so, YouTube DJs. If more listeners are like us, then Spotify’s recent addition of music videos may only solve part of its competition problem.

2. Our favourite artists receive a slim minority of our listening time

The average member of our sample spent just 4.2% of their total listening time on their top artist. Let that sink in: the artists we enjoy the most receive a tiny minority of our listening time. In fact, the average member of our sample listened to 2,728 songs from 1,488 artists in 2025. This complicates rightsholders’ focus on superfans – who might disproportionately drive concert ticket and merch sales, but currently seem to make much less of a difference when it comes to stream share.

Moreover, this listening time placed our average sample member in the most dedicated 1% of their top artists’ listeners, meaning that by contributing just 4.2% of their attention on average, they are still offering more than 99% of listeners do.

To add another layer, the average top song in our sample received 55 plays over the entire year. If we assume a song length of 3 minutes, this would entail that the average sample member’s favourite song of the year contributed just 0.4% of their total music streaming time. No wonder even superstars groan about pro rata streaming economics. The paradox of the modern music industry is once again made clear: It is easier than ever for artists to get listened to once, but harder than ever to achieve meaningful repeat listening.

3. It’s a singles world – but the album isn’t dead yet

The average member of our sample spent 642 minutes on their “top” album, representing just 1.7% of total annual listening time. We didn't need these stats to tell us that streaming is a singles world – but at least at MIDiA, we have not yet hung up the album format for good. The average sample member listened to 28 albums in 2025, averaging 2.3 albums per month (a user must listen to at least 70% of an album for it to count towards this total, according to Spotify). Some contributors even mentioned that their Spotify listening hours have gone down slightly because they are listening to more vinyl records. 

4. Podcasts are eroding music streaming time

For our team, music time dwarfed podcast time overall. Average total time spent listening to podcasts (1,042 minutes) was just 2.8% of average total time spent listening to music (37,229 minutes). MIDiA consumer survey data helps clear up the global picture. While podcasts are catching up to music streaming by monthly active and weekly active users, podcasts are much further behind when it comes to daily active users. This reflects the formats themselves – with music much more background-able, it is easier to imagine streaming music all day long than to do the same with podcasts. 

However, this does not mean podcasts don’t have an impact on music streaming time. Multiply those measly 1,042 minutes by Spotify’s 281 million premium subscribers, and you would get 557,081 years (more than 5,000 centuries!) worth of listening to podcasts that might have gone to music instead. Not only do podcasts now compete for streams – they also compete with ad-supported music streaming for ad spend. For more on this, look out for MIDiA’s ad-supported streaming market shares report, coming later this month. 

5. Age is but a number

As if the music industry needed any further confirmation that catalogue dominates listening, this year’s Wrapped included a “listening age”, estimating the age users would be if they grew up listening to the music they listen to now. The vast majority of our sample members had a “listening age” above their actual age. In many cases, the difference was massive, with several Gen Z and millennials scoring listening ages in the 70s and 80s. Today, the “new release” label is losing significance, as any music can be “new” so long as it is new to the user.

For more Wrapped analysis, check out our MIDiA Wrapped blog editions from 2024 and 2023. If you’re curious to know what made up our listening this year, among our Wrapped albums of 2025 were Same Day Cleaning by Sammy Virji, Submarine by The Marias, West End Girl by Lily Allen, Snog by The Popguns, and I Barely Know Her by sombr. Among our top Wrapped artists were Olivia Dean, TOMORROW X TOGETHER, Vapour Trail, The Rolling Stones, and João Gilberto.