
Music Fandom Maps - pmcpinto
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/upshot/music-fandom-maps.html
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sushisource
As with any map like this, the most startling thing to me is how the south
really is a totally different culture, almost a totally different country.

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leemcalilly
Here's an interesting filter to apply to this map: all of the innovative music
from the last 100 years originated in the triangle between Memphis, New
Orleans and Nashville—blues, jazz, R&B, rock and roll, and country. All of
those genres were born in that small geographical area. It's the Silicon
valley of modern music. You could also argue that hip hop is a permutation of
blues/r&b.

~~~
freehunter
What's also interesting is that now that triangle is "the established players"
and the disruption comes from various other areas. Grunge from Seattle,
Motown/R&B from Detroit, hip-hop from Atlanta, old-time from Asheville,
electric blues from Chicago.

Much like how Apple from Silicon Valley owned the idea of buying digital music
until Spotify swooped in from Sweden and disrupted that business model and
forced Apple to change their plans, the Nashville sound is in constant danger
of being disrupted from afar by similar-but-more-modern sounds.

Interesting parallel I think.

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no_gravity
Since I run [https://www.music-map.com](https://www.music-map.com) this
naturally caught my eye.

Unfortunately, there is no word on the methodology except that they did it
with "the help of YouTube’s geocoded streaming data". Does anybody know what
that is?

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anonu
How does your music map work? Not too clear on how related artists are picked.

Also, I'm guessing that the nyt got some sort of special dataset from YouTube.
Geo located streams are priveleged to the content owner, per the YouTube API.

~~~
no_gravity
It is all user driven. The map is based on what people enter at
[http://www.gnoosic.com](http://www.gnoosic.com).

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samat
Is this from some public YouTube data/API? Would really like to do this for
other countries.

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oonny
VideoAmigo already does this for all countries (sourcing from YouTube) Top
videos: [https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-
videos](https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-videos) Top
Channels: [https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-
channels](https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-channels) Top
Unsigned artists: [https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-
unsigned](https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-unsigned)

You can sort each by country, genre, language.

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diehell
I would like to do the same with my country (malaysia). Even video amigo
doesn't have the stats for mine. How would one do this? That's the interesting
bit.

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oonny
yours as in ... you as an artist? these are the top channels in Malaysia:
[https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-
channels?c...](https://www.videoamigo.com/music-charts/top-music-
channels?c=Malaysia)

~~~
diehell
No,i am not an artist. Just for fun, to have an idea, how does; in this
situation (music, be it unsigned artist or artist) youtube views coincide with
the local mainstream (radio) plays.

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nissimk
The integrated youtube videos are really nice in this page. I like this best
as an introduction to music I haven't heard. I like Kevin Gates 2 Phones.

~~~
ericzawo
Kevin Gates is an amazing, underrated artist and absolutely worth your time.

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crazygringo
Fascinating. But so many of the maps look identical to each other, they
obviously "cluster" together.

I'd be much more interested in seeing a SVD-style analysis that showed a map
for each dimension and listed the bands that most closely matched the
dimension.

It would literally discover "geographical music genres".

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the_cat_kittles
are these maps using county boundaries? i would prefer something like kernel
density or normalizing for county population or something... but still very
cool. mississippi louisiana alabama georgia seem to be one pole, and
everywhere else the other.

~~~
brookside
Likely correlating with race:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_African-
American_population)

~~~
Gargoyle
Even more specific, you can see the Black Belt very clearly in a lot of the
maps. Some artists correlate very positively, some very negatively.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_(U.S._region)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Belt_\(U.S._region\))

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Shivetya
Okay, took me a minute to understand it. So this is only based on Youtube
views? I am more interested in radio, let alone if we could ever map iTunes
sales to regions by song that would be impressive too. Another good area to
explore is what are various college radio stations playing across the country?

With regards to youtube, some genres of music have been more aggressive using
the medium than others and even some older artists have barely accepted the
digital age fully or took a long time to do so.

~~~
iamatworknow
Would radio be a good indicator of what people are actually listening to,
though? All that would tell you is what the station is playing, not how many
people are listening. Plus, stations have their own motives to play (or not
play) what they do.

From what I've seen if people don't have access to their "own" media (be it a
Spotify subscription, iTunes, loose MP3, CDs, whatever) and they want to
listen to a song, YouTube is where they go.

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freehunter
I found it weird looking at my region and not a single map had any significant
shading to it. I wonder if our tastes are just that esoteric or my neighbors
prefer a genre of music that isn't represented in this article.

Also some of their analysis doesn't quite line up with the graphic... "of
course, Eminem is popular in his hometown, Detroit" while Detroit is as darkly
shaded on the map as, say, northern New Mexico.

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santaclaus
It would be cool to see the inverse of this -- a service that analyzes your
Spotify history and guesses where you are from.

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santaclaus
What is the random zip code in eastern Washington that really likes to bump
Future?

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boogiewoogie
I'd rather see how the top touring bands are distributed.

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landonalder
Montanans really love their Eminem

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akhilcacharya
Fun thing to think about - someone on twitter brought up that the Eminem map
looks a lot like the Obama to Trump swing map. From what Maine, Michigan and
Pennsylvania look like I think it's a decent match.

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thrownblown
Roughnecks love them some Eminem.

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vmarshall23
Wow. Other than Metallica, I don't own an album by any of these people, and
other than Metallica and Michael Jackson, I don't think I'd be able to name a
single song by the few others that I _do_ recognize the name.

Oh, and I'm using the word "album". That probably explains it all ... :-)

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jbob2000
Their analysis is biased. Young people predominantly use digital services to
consume music, whereas older generations still use CDs and the radio.

As an anecdote, the older I get, the less music I listen to. It used to be a
big part of my identity, but now I just listen to music if it sounds good or
if I need something to drown out the noise around me.

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thanatropism
Anecdote applies to me.

I experience some headphone fatigue nowadays too. Once upon a time I must have
been listening to music for 60-75% of my waking minutes.

Also somehow I feel much more tranquil in just walking and listening to my
thoughts and feelings (even unwelcome ones). I think I listened to a lot of
music to experiment with different identities and ways of feeling, and approx.
since I turned 30 I started to develop my own in a much more interesting way.

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GoodAdmiral
I mean yeah their entire discography is pretty religious. Makes sense. I do
enjoy it while being non-religious myself however.

