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Spotify has a knack for mining your listening data into something fun and sharable rather than weird and creepy for its annual “Wrapped” feature. This year, it outdid itself. The 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped goes beyond just summarizing what you listened to with charts and infographics. This year, Spotify is also assigning each user a “Listening Age,” which is based on the release years of their favorite tracks compared to others in the same age group. The feature quickly went rival, as users recoiled at their seemingly geriatric (or juvenile) musical tastes. At the risk of reading too much into something that’s ultimately good fun, Wrapped’s expanding purview is a reminder of how the things you listen to can speak to who you are as person, which could end up being valuable data. Your Listening Age is mostly a silly diversion, but it could also be a kind of flex as Spotify expands its targeted advertising ambitions. Heading into 2026, Spotify is under pressure from shareholders to boost ad revenue. While 63% of monthly active users are on Spotify’s free, ad-supported plan, they only made up about 10% of revenues last quarter. Analysts such as Rich Greenfield have criticized the Spotify for disappointing ad revenue growth, and the company launched a programmatic ad exchange earlier this year to scale up its ad placements. The shift toward programmatic advertising, in which ads are bought and sold through automated systems, will entail granular targeting of users based on what Spotify knows about them. Spotify has long boasted to advertisers about being able to target ads based on users’ listening behaviors and interests, and says its programmatic ads will let advertisers “reach users based on moods, mindsets and moments.” This doesn’t exactly come across in Spotify’s user-level data. If you download a copy of it, you’ll find an “Inferences” section in which Spotify tries to guess some things about you, based on both your usage of the service and on data from advertisers, but some users have puzzled over how wildly inaccurate this data can be. For instance, it categorized one user as both Democrat and Republican, and another as simultaneously getting engaged and divorced. But this year’s Spotify Wrapped shows that there’s another level of analysis going on, one that might be a little more nuanced than just your likes and interests. As Spotify notes, your Listening Age is based not simply on when your most-played songs came out, but how those tastes compare to other people who are your actual age. It’s reminiscent of Wrapped 2023’s “Sound Town” feature, in which each user was given a city with which their musical tastes lined up. Users are starting to realize that this kind of analysis has value outside of Spotify. In February, a small group of them formed a collective called “Unwrapped” to pool and monetize their data. As reported by Ars Technica, roughly 10,000 users voted to sell aggregate artist preference data to an AI company for cryptocurrency worth about $5 per user. The group also hoped to tap into their data in other ways, for instance to identify emotional patterns in their listening habits. Spotify objected to users selling their own data via its APIs and warned Unwrapped’s developers to knock it off. The site now shows a message saying “This Service is No Longer Available.” Users who want to run their own analyses on Spotify’s data must manually download a copy of it instead. Should Spotify’s power of inference bother you at all? In the grand scheme of things, probably not. People are already pouring their hearts out to generative AI assistants that are likely to switch on their own hyper-targeted advertising businesses in the years ahead. The upshot is that the ads you see could be as much tied to your psychological state as they are to your interests or demographics. Spotify’s ability to target ads based on your mood might soon seem quaint by comparison. But don’t be surprised if future Wrapped features push things just a little further, beyond just how old you seem or what city you vibe with, but how excited, annoyed, anxious, carefree, or spontaneous you’ve been. As long as Spotify can package that psychology in a fun way, it’ll surely go viral again.
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In the English countryside, a new project has emerged from the landscapequite literally. Rammed Earth House, a residential estate by London-based Tuckey Design Studio, combines renovated brick buildings with new rammed earth structures, harnessing the clay soil of the very land it sits on. The material is already under your feet, and it doesnt come with all the carbon baggage that other [building] materials come with, says studio founder Jonathan Tuckey. As a building technique, rammed earthwhich combines clay soil with aggregate such as gravel into tightly compressed layerstraces back thousands of years. It was widely used in ancient China, but appears globally throughout history, including in the U.S. After the industrial revolution, and the innovations of steel, concrete, glass, and mass-produced bricks, the traditional method fell out of favor. Now, however, an increasing number of architects are looking to the material as a sustainable, place-rooted way to build amid a climate crisis that calls for dramatically reduced carbon emissions. Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio] It has this carbon credit locked into itthats a major head start against any other material, says Tuckey. Because rammed earth doesnt require high-temperature firing processes like bricks or concrete, and can use material from the building site itself (without need for transportation), its associated carbon emissions tend to be much lower. It can also harness material that might otherwise go to waste. At Rammed Earth House, the client wanted some run-down buildings on site to be demolishedbut rather than this rubble being wasted, Tuckey Design Studio used it as the aggregate for the rammed earth, recycling the old buildings into the new. Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio] Its an entirely circular material, says Tuckey of rammed earth. If you ever wanted to demolish it, it would just go back into the ground. If you wanted to repair it, you can just pick up the clay from the ground and bash it in simplyit will be restored immediately. Rammed Earth House [Photo: Jim Stephenson/courtesy Tuckey DesignStudio] Architects also praise rammed earths high thermal massinsulative properties that regulate a buildings indoor temperature. For U.S practice Lake Flato Architects, this was particularly helpful for a home in west Texas, Marfa Ranch. In the desert environment, temperatures vary greatly; using rammed earth meant the dwelling could be comfortable on the hottest days of the year, and also on the coldest, says practice partner Bob Harris. The material also connected the building to its landscape, using locally sourced earth. It felt really natural for us to build of that material, says Harris. Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato] The same was true for global practice Snhetta, which is using rammed earth for the upcoming Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakotas Badlands, integrating large internal walls made from the material. We were looking to create a building that is of the place, explains Aaron Dorf, director and architect at Snhetta. The surrounding landscape is defined by layers and layers of earth that you seeits profoundly beautiful. The material has a natural, textured and warm-hued appearance that can enhance an interior. Its a much more tactile public-facing material, says Dorf. Tuckey describes it as looking like some precious travertine stone. [Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta] The expertise problem The material does come with challenges, howeverand resilience, labor, time, and location are primary issues. When you decide to use rammed earth, you come quite quickly to a fork in the road as to which route youre going to go down, and they are fundamentally different materials, says Tckey. These two versions, stabilized and unstabilized rammed earth, demand different features and have variable ecological credentials. [Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta] Stabilized rammed earth has cement in the mix to make the material more robust and resilient, especially to water. Some sustainability experts have criticized this as having a similar negative ecological impact to concrete, which also uses cement (the carbon emissions from cement come during the heating of limestone to high temperatures). [Photo: Chad Ziemendorf/courtesy Snhetta] Lake Flato and Snhetta used stabilized rammed earth for durability, but the architects insist the proportion of cement used is very low. At Marfa Ranch, cement makes up approximately 6% of the material, explains Harris, which can be compared to an average of 10% to 15% in concrete. Unstabilized rammed earth does not include any cement, thus eliminating those associated carbon emissions and becoming a circular material, but it subsequently requires techniques to prevent erosion when exposed to the elements. Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato] Tuckey explains that using a base and topper of more waterproof materialin the case of Rammed Earth House, he used bricksprotects the rammed earth walls from water damage. Meanwhile, to protect from rain, he placed slim horizontal lines of trass lime rock that project away from the external surface, allowing rainwater to fall off. As long as you understand how the material is used, the challenges fall away, Tuckey says. But it is this in-depth knowledge of building with rammed earth that can be hard to find. It has become a lost form of construction, says Tuckey, who collaborated with Martin Rauch, a rammed earth expert from Austria. Expertise is a challenge, agrees Lake Flato partner Andrew Herdeg, who oversaw the practices Horizon House project in Nevada, which also used rammed earth. There, the architects brought in a consultant from northern California. The process can be a slow one, tooespecially for those new to the technique. The earth is compressed down within tightly confined formwork (wooden supporting structures that are removed at the end of the process); ramming it by hand is a grueling process, says Herdegthough it is possible to use pneumatic tampers. Its very labour intensive, agrees Harris. It takes quite a long time to construct [the] walls. Because of that labour, he adds, it can be costly. The architects estimate that compared to concrete, there is a roughly 12% cost uplift when building with rammed earth. Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato] Built for the right climate Perhaps most important is to use rammed earth in the locations and climates that make most sense. We wouldnt want to drive earth around the country, just to use it for the sake of it, says Tuckey, explaining that its best if the clay soil needed is found locally. Lake Flato advocates it as a dry climate response, says Herdeg; best in a context where theres low humidity and high diurnal swings. It really excels in those environments. Snhettas Dorf echoes the sentiment: You have to build it in the right location. And I think forcing it into the wrong climate isn’t going to work very well. Still, the architects seem to believe that when those right conditions align and the challenges are navigated, rammed earth has a positive impact across multiple aspects. We think of our work as a tool to connect people to place, to context, to the natural environment, says Herdeg. For him, rammed earth can reflect a literal mission of building responsibly, but also a philosophical mission, encouraging others to care about that responsibility. Lake Flato is currently planning an extension to Horizon House, and though contractors advocate poured concrete, Herdeg is keen to continue using rammed earth. The reality is you can do just a coloured concrete wall and it looks quite similar to rammed earth and costs significantly less, he says. But at the end of the day, the carbon footprint of the concrete is significantly higherand you don’t get that real material texture. Marfa Ranch [Photo: Casey Dunn/courtesy Lake Flato] Meanwhile, many are looking to intersect new technologies and engineering with the ancient building method to make it more practical or affordable to use. Tuckey cites one company that produces prefabricated timber frames infilled with rammed earth, and engineers in Australia recently developed modular blocks of rammed earth in cardboard cylinders. Inspired by using the material for Rammed Earth House, Tuckeys studio is now working on a project of terraced houses using prefabricated rammed earth blocks. The aim is to establish a factory near to the site in Gloucestershire, in southwest England, to make the prefabricated elements, using local construction waste as the aggregate in the rammed earth mixture. I think its about a reawakening, Tuckey says of the new era of rammed earth architecture, and of moving away from more carbon-intensive building materials. His hope is that when you look at a pile of brand-new bricks, you look at them not just with dollar signs in your mind, but also carbon signs.
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After Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO of Allbirds in March 2024, he took three months offmainly because his wife Liz said shed divorce him if he jumped into another venture. He had run the sustainable shoe company for 10 years while the couple raised their three young children. It took a real toll on the family, Liz says. (I would say it developed character in our family, Zwillinger counters.) Before long, he was itching to start a new project, an ambition he shyly expressed to his wife. It was really hard to want to sign up for something like that all over again, Liz says. But this time, he cofounded the venture with Liz. Joey & Liz Zwillinger [Photo: Biologica] Its also a bold pivot from a sustainable shoe company to an entirely different industry: womens hormone health supplements. At a time when health and wellness is big business, it might also be a smart pivot. But its an undeniably different world, navigating health regulations and making bold investment choices when such bets didnt go so well at Allbirds. Revenue and share prices dipped drastically starting in 2022, and have hardly recovered. Launching December 9, Biologica is a set of new supplements for womens health, naturally flavored and powdered to fizz into water. Each single sachet, or separately sealed daily dose to be mixed with eight ounces of water, targets different body functions with ingredients including electrolytes, multivitamins, botanicals, and probiotics. Crucially to the value proposition, there are three products for different life stages: younger reproductive years, perimenopause, and post-menopause. While some share ingredients like Vitamin C and potassium, for different stages you may have dosages of broccoli extract (for detoxification and liver function), pomegranate extract (for skin hydration), or saffron (for mood balance and sleep quality). The idea came from Lizs own struggles; she would take different supplements daily for various issues, leading to seven separate pills plus extra vitamins, which became a super onerous supplement routine that didn’t feel like it was sustainable, she says. That was a common issue the couple found in their initial focus groups. Women could only find a one-size-fits-all pill or gummy that promised to do everything. Or, as in Lizs case, various targeted supplements, which became unsustainable as the cost of living rose. They also found that women of different ages had different concerns. So they set out to create a company with only one product per customerbut narrowed to their hormonal age. They believe thats their major selling point. [Photo: Biologica] MAHA movement and ‘changing winds’ The health and wellness sector is absolutely an attractive space for founders now, says Matthew Oster, head of health, beauty, and hygiene insights at Euromonitor International. He says lines are now blurrier than ever between pharma and food and beverage. A trend toward natural and food-based remedies has been churning in the background culturally over the last 10 or 15 years, he says, and increasingly linked with medical distrustand has now become branded as RFK Jr.s Make America Healthy Again movement. So at the same time that these companies are recognizing that consumers want healthier products, he says, there’s this whole movement codifying that. Supplements, whether fortified fibers, proteins, or biotics, are no longer just a hippie, natural, crunchy thing, Oster says. It’s a dead-right-in-the-middle mainstream proposition. But in the age of TikTokification, this wellness market is rife with changing winds, on a dime, Oster says. Some of these ingredients trends last months as opposed to years. Longevity is often hard to forecast: CBD was an example of a fleeting fad, but other trends, like protein, are only getting bigger. Womens health might be a better bet, especially around life stages. No one really even talked about perimenopause a few years ago from a product formulation perspective, Oster says. In a short amount of time, we had a proliferation of products in that space. There are others on the market, but not a tremendous amount, Oster says. Perelel is a supplements company that has seen strong growth since August 2024, where you can shop by stage, from trying to conceive, through perimenopause. Health & Her is a British company with capsule products for different life stages, which launched in the U.S. this summer with CVS. Now, he says, its just about seeing which products will stick, and which will fizzle out. The failure rate may be high, but at least its a relatively short lead time to get to market versus digital health or pharma products (the Zwillingers have gone from ideation to rollout in a year and a half), and a relatively minimal financial commitment (they raised a $7 million seed round). This is a low bet from an investment cost, Oster says, that if you lose your shirt, you lose your shirt. [Photo: Biologica] Learning lessons from Allbirds fall But its still a risk to navigate a new industry when Zwillingers previous venture took an unexpected plunge after its initial success. In the late 2010s, Allbirds was a phenomenon. Its minimalist running sneakers, made from merino wool and a foam sole of sugar cane, were named the worlds most comfortable shoes by Time in 2017. They became almost the official dress code of Silicon Valley, part of the tech bro starter pack meme (along with the Patagonia zipper vest, Yeti bottle, and Lime scooter). They were like a cultural snapshot of the era; even Obama was spotted wearing them. But in March 2024, Zwillinger resigned and handed over the CEO reins after repeated cycles of declining revenue. Even by 2022, The Wall Street Journal assessed, the tech bros had moved on. The medias Allbirds postmortems blamed overly ambitious expansion beyond their core bestsellers, and too rashly opening numerous brick-and-mortar stores. Today, revenue is still declining, and half its stores are closed. Zwillinger, still an active board member, says when COVID-19 hit during the companys peakeclipsing $200 million in revenuehe and his cofounder, Tim Brown, responded too dramatically to shifting consumer trends, including pivoting too hard from lifestyle to running and hiking. We were too immature of a company to parse out what was signal and what was noise, he says, and we made some really big bets based on that. They were forced to discount the product to move the inventory. Allbirds was also known for its eco-friendliness: its a certified B Corp, with a core polymer material thats carbon-negative. Zwillinger says hes learned you cant build a business around sustainability alone. [Consumers] want to make sure that the innovation actually does something that meets their needs, he says. In a way, navigating health in the new business is similar to navigating sustainability. Once competing with some rivals that were greenwashing, they now face some wellness brands that make unsubstantiated claims. Companies feel free to say whatever to make a sale, Zwillinger says. It’s a little scary starting a business in a space like that. Theres enough leniency from the FDA for some bold claims, and a lack of budget for the agency to do much even when theres blatant overstepping. You cant say a supplement cures or prevents a disease, but you can make a claim about the role of an ingredient, like calcium builds strong bones. But some of the gray areas can lead to a freewheeling, cowboy approach to what they claim, Zwillinger says. Thats concerning to many medical experts, who have publicly noted their skepticism around supplements, some recommending not to spend money on something that most people can obtain from a healthy diet alone. An independent panel of national experts in 2022 reviewed 84 supplements studies and concluded there was insufficient evidence of their efficacy. The Zwillingers say they have tried to do things right via focus groups, clinical research, and a 1,000-woman study; they have a medical advisory board with two ob-gyns and a breast cancer surgeon specialist (as well as a more Eastern-focused herbalist). Oster says its good to get everything right with the science. But in this social media era, it might not even be science that drives sales for some consumers. Vibes and feelings are pretty influential, he says. [Photo: Biologica] DTC as the initial test Still, from a business strategy perspective, the reliance on data has been helpful, allowing them to be less subjective, and not cater to their own tastes, as Zwillinger and Brown did at Allbirds. In this situation, I have zero lived experience and no subjectivity, he says. Looking back, everyone should do that with every business they runtake themselves out of it. Consumer trends have also changed dramatically, as pandemic patterns faded and social media proliferated. Allbirds, along with fellow unicorns Warby Parker and Casper, was a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pioneer. Though assessments that DTC is dead are highly exaggerated, Oster says, companies have to get social media marketing right, as people now just buy directly from those platforms. TikTok Shop has really taken over from a supplements perspective, Oster says. Zwillinger knows they will ultimately have to be predominantly retail-oriented to be successful, but they have to start with DTC, probably for a year or two (products will be ready to ship to consumers December 9). I have learned deeply and with some scars, he says, that you need a robust and popular product before entering wholesale relationships. The DTC launch will be a way to test the product, and iron out issues. Those could be things like flavors, which theyve formulated without sugar. Or the price, which is $59 a month, for 30 sachets in a tin, to finance some expensive ingredients like saffron. Or, the branding of the product, which theyve tried to give a premium feel, with elegant-looking tins to be displayed on a counter or desk, not shoved away in the pantry, and to speak to a sophisticated customer base. But of course, all remains to be seen as it rolls out. We think we’re brilliant, [that] we’ve done everything right, Zwillinger says. But when we start selling, we’re going to find out we were idiots about lots of things.
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