Songbirds are an excellent model for investigating seasonal plasticity in the perception of learned complex acoustic communication signals. European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) sing throughout the year distinct types of song that bear either social or individual information. Although the relative importance of social and individual information changes seasonally, evidence of functional seasonal changes in neural response to these songs remains elusive. We thus decided to use in vivo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electrophysiological recordings to examine auditory responses of starlings that were exposed to songs that convey different levels of information (species-specific and group identity or individual identity), both during (when mate recognition is particularly important) and outside the breeding season (when group recognition is particularly important). Our results show an interaction between seasons and the level of information conveyed by starlings' songs. Starlings therefore appear to respond preferentially to different types of partners according to the time of the year and of the reproductive cycle. This study provides evidence that auditory processing of behaviourally-relevant (conspecific) communication signals changes seasonally, even when the spectro-temporal properties of these signals do not change.