Spotify's new map shows musical tastes of a thousand cities

Have you ever wondered what other people in your city are listening to? If so, Spotify's newly created Musical Map will be of particular interest. The map uses Spotify's glut of data to create playlists based on the listening habits of users across 1,000 cities around the globe. The map presently includes cities in the Americas, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia. Clicking on a city will pull up a link to a playlist on Spotify that was created to show what kind of music is popular in the region.

Spotify says that thanks to how connected the world is, people all over the place tend to listen to the same popular songs. Beneath those popular songs, however, lie a massive library of content from which people pick out albums and artists. Looking at that data in particular for different cities, then, gives a glimpse of the musical "culture" for the region.

One city, for example, might have a strong preference for modern country music and specific artists within the genre, while another city may collectively enjoy classic rock. Says Spotify, these "distinctive" playlists are composed of "music that people in each city listen to quite a bit, which people in other cities also do not listen to very much. So it is, exactly, the music that makes them different from people everywhere else."

You'll need a Spotify account to pull up the playlists. To find them, search for your city in the map (above) and, assuming it is included, click the green dot that shows up to view the playlist link. If you city isn't included, zoom out a bit and pick a nearby city — the odds are that city's tastes aren't too different from your own city's.

SOURCE: Spotify Insights