Music is a universal language — and maybe one with more variants than any other. To understand these nuances, let’s step back and see and hear how people around the world (cities and countries) listen to music differently, what they share the most, and more.
Click a country or city to hear its music (instructions below; full-screen version).
Navigate by dragging the map.
Zoom with the + and – buttons at the top left.
Click a city to hear music distinctive* to that city — songs that are enjoyed there disproportionately a lot relative to in other places. It’s a great way to understand the musical character of well over a thousand cities worldwide.
Click a country to hear:
- Distinctive music: played there disproportionately relative to in other countries
- Emerging music: just starting to take hold
- Popular music: streaming from windows, headphones, and cars
- Viral music: shared left and right
Everything in the musical map of the world updates every week, so you can embed a current version of the above map audiographic with this link, or the following HTML:
<iframe src="https://spotifymaps.github.io/musicalcities/" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>
This version 2.0 of our audiographic map (first version here) includes new cities, plus four new country-level playlists and a native pop-up player so you can hear the places right there on the map (thanks, Carto).
* Spotify Data Alchemist Glenn McDonald analyzes many billions of listener-track interactions on a regular basis to distill each place’s musical character into those distinctive playlists.
Come to India, God!
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make it available in Georgia too
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Well, according to this map, cities as disparate as London, Berlin, Vienna, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago all have the same top ‘distinctive’ song, and nearly the identical top 5… I think your data alchemist is maybe a bit overworked trying to analyze billions of interactions… let alone comprehending and identifying distinctive musical styles for, literally, the entire world.
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Glenn says, “Distinctive popularity is a combination of absolute local popularity and that local popularity relative to global popularity, plus a bit of a bonus for newness. The weighting of these elements is arbitrary, and could be changed to produce more distinct (but more obscure) music or more popular (but less distinct) music, or slower- or faster-changing lists. But the current weights have held up fairly well over time. Big international hits like this have their moments, but pass pretty quickly.”
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Spotify is not available worldwide and will never be due to legal constraints and technology issues. Check Kanjian 360 app on iTunes and Google Play stores for the Chinese Spotify.
2017 will be the year of the change, time to start to pay content creators and give listers the freedom of choice they deserve.
20 million songs? Think about an app that gives you access to 90 million songs and pays the artists… utopia?
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I would be interested in a yearly review per city and/or country. Could you tell me if that’s available?
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I’ll contact you directly to discuss.
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Hi Eliot! I would be interested too in a yearly review per city (in my case, Malaga (Spain)). And I have another question: Is it possible to know the genre of a song in a playlist? Thanks!
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Hi Eliot! I’m also interested in a yearly review per city (in mi case, Malaga(Spain)). And I have another question: Is it possible to know the genre of a song in a playlist?
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As you’ve probably seen, we have Malaga updated weekly here: https://open.spotify.com/user/thesoundsofspotify/playlist/3UblVnb3WBARz5TYTbd1L5
Also, I’ve emailed you about the genre question, and could potentially get a year of music distinctive to Malaga as well – see email for details.
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Thank you, Eliot. I’ve replied the email 😉
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I would be interested in a weekly or year review per city and/or country. Specially Santiago, Dominican Republic Is that’s available?
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Is there any place where ranking per cities can be found?
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Each city playlist is ranked by how distinctive each track is to that city, so the rankings can be found in the playlists.
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Sorry, wrong question… what I meant was “is there any place where we can fund how this rankings per cities are made”? It would be interesting to know the most song played by cities….
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These are the songs most distinctive to each city at any given time. We have no such map for the most popular per city at the moment (‘most popular’ doesn’t vary as much per city), but perhaps we will in the future.
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Can you do a Map for modern classical music or for Jazz? That would be great to have maps by musical genre.
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We are a group of MSc students on urban analytics in London and we would be really interested in including this map as part of a research project. Could you please contact us? Thanks
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We are a group of MSc students on urban analytics in London and we would be really interested in including this map as part of a research project. Could you please contact us? Thanks
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Sure, will do.
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There’s embed code, if you’d like to include it – would that work?
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Hey Eliot, very cool stuff. Is it possible that at any point localized streaming data (in aggregate, such as this) will become available via your API? I am very interested in the ability to see what is trending in a specific locale/city (emerging you may call it) and leveraging that data to book artists in venues where we can say with some degree of precision that there will be good attendance.
What you have is close, though obviously limited to certain cities.
I would love to speak further about this if you have the inclination/time. Have a great day.
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Thanks, Daniel. And if you’re looking for what’s trending in certain cities in the past week on a rolling scale vs. what people are listening to in other cities, you might try here: https://spotifymaps.github.io/musicalcities/ or here (text version): http://everynoise.com/everyplace.cgi
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Thanks for the response Eliot, I sincerely appreciate it, all of that is…frankly remarkably interesting. Ultimately what would be most interesting to me, and beneficial to emerging artists overall, is the ability to really drill down into that information…obviously more cities / markets as well.
Are you guys selecting cities by whether or not there is a significant difference between them and the…overall country or global average (or some level anyway)? I only ask because while the cities listed (green on this map) are somewhat correlated with size it isn’t exactly what I would expect, though that may be me simply, well, being wrong.
What would be most beneficial to me is the overall volume of spins per artist (by location) as opposed to the significant difference between cities/regions. Of course, you may keep that data close to the cuff, and understandably so. Also, the top 100 (or 500, whatever) wouldn’t matter much, I can guess, as could you, what that would likely be.
I get that volume probably isn’t as interesting to you guys, and frankly may not vary much from location to location (as a % of total spins), but it would really be much more actionable to a guy like me.
If you could add one city to this, under the current format even, Little Rock, Arkansas would be of most benefit to me.
I’m speaking as a person who books acts in venues specifically, not one who manages a specific artist or group of artists, so the geographic data is very important to me in order to lessen venue risk. I’m really trying to get A) exposure and B) money to emerging artists, but I also have to sell it to venues.
Sorry for the lengthy reply Eliot, I know you’re busy and don’t have to respond to some stranger on the internet at all. I really appreciate the correspondence, truly.
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Hi Eliot, this map is really interesting. I am working on my PhD in Germany and my question is similar to Daniel’s. Is this data available for research (through the API, for example)? For example, if one could get the trending tracks by specifying a city. Thanks!
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Hi Paras,
Those are not available through the API, but the playlists in the map — created by our data alchemist Glenn McDonald — show the music that’s played disproportionately in each city and they update each week. You can see them as a list here, with various filters that might be helpful:
http://everynoise.com/everyplace.cgi
cheers,
evb
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Hi Eliot, this map is really interesting. I am a PhD student in Germany and my question is similar to Daniel’s. Is this data available for research (through the API, for example)? For example, if one could get the trending tracks by specifying a city. Thanks!
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Hi Eliot,
I would like to know the number of spotify users in Singapore, as well as the percentage of users who listen to spotify with their earphones/headphones.
Would you be able to help me on this?
Thanks,
Mark
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We don’t divulge user numbers other than the overall global ones here: https://press.spotify.com/co/about/
In terms of listening with headphones on, I could poke around for something like that potentially, but I’m a little concerned about how accurate it would be… for instance, I often listen to my laptop connected to speakers, which would seem like headphones. Perhaps there’s a poll somewhere about that regarding streaming services in general?
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— Keep up the good work! —
I deputy the reddit community which supports and follows Spotify and its activities.
We even have a Bot who based on your Spotify playlist analyze your musical taste.
Link –> https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify_transcriber/
Our subbreddit r/Spotify reached more than 50 k members and serves mainly the purpose of sharing Spotify playlists with each other. Personally I’m looking forward that Spotify cooperates with the Soundcloud community even if it’s unlikely that these two will get together or make a Joint-venture. Things like the musical Heat map are great concepts both for analytics as well as the ”normal” Spotify listener under us. I listened to 30 cities so far and I’m still fascinated. So all in all…
— Keep up the good work! —
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Can I have this map on my mobile?
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Good night, I’m a student computer science, I would like to know if do you have a documentation this musical map ?
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Not other than what you see here, but if you have questions, I can try to answer them.
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Thank you! I am student in Brazilian and I would like to know if is there an API for Musical Map 2.0?
I would like to use in a project university.
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Hi Conrado,
There is no API, but you can find the list in text/list form here, if that helps. The URLs/URIs stay the same, and the songs update once a week: http://everynoise.com/everyplace.cgi
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Would love to see this map work within the desktop and mobile apps – any possibility in near future?
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Hello Elliot I have the exact same request as what Daniel Schutte stayed. As I also work for a venue (State Farm Arena) down over here in the Rio Grande Valley. Is there a way we can schedule a call?
Thank you for your time.
Daniel Schutte says:
Thanks for the response Eliot, I sincerely appreciate it, all of that is…frankly remarkably interesting. Ultimately what would be most interesting to me, and beneficial to emerging artists overall, is the ability to really drill down into that information…obviously more cities / markets as well.
Are you guys selecting cities by whether or not there is a significant difference between them and the…overall country or global average (or some level anyway)? I only ask because while the cities listed (green on this map) are somewhat correlated with size it isn’t exactly what I would expect, though that may be me simply, well, being wrong.
What would be most beneficial to me is the overall volume of spins per artist (by location) as opposed to the significant difference between cities/regions. Of course, you may keep that data close to the cuff, and understandably so. Also, the top 100 (or 500, whatever) wouldn’t matter much, I can guess, as could you, what that would likely be.
I get that volume probably isn’t as interesting to you guys, and frankly may not vary much from location to location (as a % of total spins), but it would really be much more actionable to a guy like me.
If you could add one city to this, under the current format even, Little Rock, Arkansas would be of most benefit to me.
I’m speaking as a person who books acts in venues specifically, not one who manages a specific artist or group of artists, so the geographic data is very important to me in order to lessen venue risk. I’m really trying to get A) exposure and B) money to emerging artists, but I also have to sell it to venues.
Sorry for the lengthy reply Eliot, I know you’re busy and don’t have to respond to some stranger on the internet at all. I really appreciate the correspondence, truly.
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at least cover the whole EU.. when Spotify will be available in Slovenia?
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Hello! Do you know if we can have the listeners of a specific artist on a specific city???
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Not through this map… What would this be for? I might be able to help.
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Thanks for you reply!!
We are producing a massive event in Mexico and Monterrey. We want to see the base of people who listen to the artists who will be performing at the concerts. Do you know if it is possible to get that database?
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Would it be possible to get genre statistics by country
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Hi Eliot again ,
I would really appreciate if you could help me with a response.
Im am doing my MA and this information is essential for my investigation. Therefore I am only asking for the info on mexico( the playlists that you chage weekly per city of mexico ) that you have from 2015 till today if possible.
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Hi Eliot,
Congratulatons for Musical Map iniciative!
As I work with geomarketing and big data, sounds challenging to analyse the degree of correlation (if any) between most repeated (or listened) words in each city with it´s associated ‘mood’ and their impact in consumer spending trends.
Is that possible to have access to an yearly based Brazilian music city ranked by respective lyrics words prevalence? If some kind of summarization could be shared (total 2015 x 2016 per city, for example), it will be a pleasure to discuss with you our findings and insights.
Thank you in advance and looking forward to your contact.
Francisco
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Great to have this kind of information! What a great idea “Spotify Insights”
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Hi guys
I want to know if exist a spotify geo dataset in order to perform data mining analysis? The Spotify web API provides only information about market. I am interested on thiese geo data.
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I don’t believe that’s available, but you can find a list of city playlists here: http://everynoise.com/everyplace.cgi
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I was wondering if there is a way to look back at certain periods of time to see which songs were popular during a previously recorded week.
Thanks!
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The map doesn’t go back historically — the good part about that is that the map is always current. (Also, this isn’t ‘most popular’ – it’s the music most distinctive to each city.) If you have a specific question about a certain city/timeframe for publication or research, though, I might be able to help.
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Hi!
Nice map! Is it possible to read out: ” in this area, Spotify is not used” ? /Malin
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Elliot, I am trying to create a project where I can gather information about users in a particular area and use the API to get what genre of music they are currently listening to and then turn that into a cool display of some sort. Is there any way that I can do this?
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Have you explored the web API? I think whatever you’d be able to work with externally would be available there.
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It’s cool and all, but when a fair portion of the songs won’t even play 30-second samples due to regional restrictions, it’s kind of pointless (especially given that this map explores music from different regions, so restricting it by region seems rather perverse).
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Hi Eliot,
I am a French student in communication and I currently have courses on data visualization. In a project of a dataviz analysis, I found “musical map of the world”.
I have some general questions about this work, is it possible to exchange by mail?
Thank you very much,
Noëmie
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These kind of projects are really fun. The fact that we can analyze data like this is awesome. @o years ago getting this kind of data would have been a large and costly effort. It’s really something to see how some song resonate within so many parts of the world.
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Is there a way to see historical of a city? For example I’d like to see each week of 2017 and 2018 in San Diego.
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i’ll email you.
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