Who’s Listening to What?

Ever wonder what people are listening to the world over or what they were listening to at a specific point in timed? Curious to see if certain cities have specific voices they like to hear or how they differ from their neighboring towns? Want to try and work your way through every genre imaginable?

Then here are a few fun and interactive ways you can answer those mountainous questions with the minimal amount of work – a brief selection of musical maps, other than Austin’s own, that have sprung from the trusty internet:

  • Most recently, Spotify Insights put together a global map of perusable playlists by city. Musical Map: Cities of the World will be updated bi-monthly and features music from every city in which the service is available, filtering out global hits to figure out what people are really listening to locally. (Unsurprisingly, it turns out we’re listening to a healthy helping of Texas country.)
  • A different musical map that’s been hiding within the darker reserves of the web is Radiooooo, an interactive project that lets you discover what was playing on the radio all across the globe at different points in history. Pick a country, pick a decade, and then just listen away.
  • And finally, something a little different – an expansive and ongoing web of every genre imaginable. Every Noise at Once, an algorithmically generated attempt to visually display all genres, features everything from goa trance and deep italo disco, to dirty Texas rap and rebetiko. Each available genre then you leads to an artist scatter-plot to get lost in for hours.

So here’s to your cartographic journey into foreign musical lands…

Support KUTX’s ability to bring you closer to the music.

Donate Today