The comeback kids of 2026
The retention team wants a win-back story. A comeback listener is someone who (a) played something in the first half of 2025 (before 2025-07-01), (b) played something again in 2026 (on or after 2026-01-01), but (c) played nothing at all in the second half of 2025 (2025-07-01 to 2025-12-31).
Task: return user_id and name of every comeback listener, sorted by user_id. Hint for the approach: three sets of user ids combined with INTERSECT and EXCEPT make this short.
The data you can query
Each table is shown with its column types and the first rows, so you can see exactly what the data looks like.
| artist_id INTEGER | artist_name TEXT | home_country TEXT | genre TEXT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tobi Adeyemi | Nigeria | Afrobeats |
| 2 | Nala Osei | Ghana | Afrobeats |
| 3 | Neon Hanbok | South Korea | K-Pop |
| 4 | Pixel Orchid | South Korea | K-Pop |
| 5 | Luz de Alba | Mexico | Latin Pop |
| 6 | Rio Caliente | Brazil | Latin Pop |
Showing the first 6 of 16 rows.
| plan_id INTEGER | plan_name TEXT | monthly_price REAL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Free | 0 |
| 2 | Student | 4.99 |
| 3 | Premium | 9.99 |
| 4 | Family | 14.99 |
| play_id INTEGER | user_id INTEGER | track_id INTEGER | played_at TEXT | seconds_played INTEGER | device TEXT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 15 | 2025-02-10 09:10:00 | 174 | mobile |
| 2 | 11 | 7 | 2025-03-12 11:10:00 | 253 | smart_speaker |
| 3 | 13 | 33 | 2025-03-25 14:26:23 | 140 | desktop |
| 4 | 13 | 13 | 2025-03-25 14:51:34 | 245 | smart_speaker |
| 5 | 12 | 13 | 2025-04-01 12:10:00 | 272 | desktop |
| 6 | 10 | 13 | 2025-04-11 10:10:00 | 272 | smart_tv |
Showing the first 6 of 365 rows.
| sub_id INTEGER | user_id INTEGER | plan_id INTEGER | start_date TEXT | end_date TEXT | status TEXT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 3 | 2025-01-07 | 2025-09-03 | cancelled |
| 2 | 1 | 3 | 2025-11-30 | 2026-01-02 | cancelled |
| 3 | 3 | 3 | 2025-01-20 | 2025-08-23 | cancelled |
| 4 | 5 | 2 | 2025-01-28 | NULL | active |
| 5 | 6 | 4 | 2025-02-02 | 2025-03-27 | cancelled |
| 6 | 7 | 3 | 2025-02-06 | 2025-10-04 | cancelled |
Showing the first 6 of 51 rows.
| track_id INTEGER | title TEXT | artist_id INTEGER | release_year INTEGER | duration_sec INTEGER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Midnight Lagos | 1 | 2019 | 353 |
| 2 | Golden Highway | 1 | 2024 | 156 |
| 3 | Paper Lanterns | 1 | 2022 | 253 |
| 4 | Neon Rain | 2 | 2025 | 249 |
| 5 | Velvet Satellite | 2 | 2026 | 176 |
| 6 | Broken Harbor | 2 | 2020 | 157 |
Showing the first 6 of 48 rows.
| user_id INTEGER | name TEXT | country TEXT | signup_date TEXT | plan_id INTEGER | birth_year INTEGER |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aarav Iyer | India | 2025-01-07 | 1 | 1998 |
| 2 | Diego Salazar | Mexico | 2025-01-12 | 1 | 1982 |
| 3 | Lucas Almeida | Brazil | 2025-01-17 | 1 | 1976 |
| 4 | Oliver Hartley | United Kingdom | 2025-01-22 | 1 | 1978 |
| 5 | Priya Banerjee | United Kingdom | 2025-01-27 | 2 | 1999 |
| 6 | Jordan Whitaker | United States | 2025-02-01 | 1 | 2006 |
Showing the first 6 of 60 rows.
Your query runs on SQLite. Write a single SELECT; use LIMIT instead of TOP.
Need a hint?
Build one query per time window that selects user_id, then combine them left to right.
Log in or create a free account to run your code, submit and earn points.
Run your code to see the output here. Ctrl + Enter also runs it.