This week I took yet another crack at putting artists on a map. This time, I created a map that shows the top artists for every state in the US for every day of 2014 up until today. You can go through the calendar year, day-by-day to see which artists managed to capture the hearts and ears of different parts of the country. It is fascinating to see if there is a Super Bowl bump for the half-time artist, or if there is any change in how people listen to music on St. Patrick’s day, or to see which artists are regional and which are national.
You can read more about the app on the insights.spotify.com blog and then take the app for a test drive. Hit the ‘GO!’ button to animate through the days of the year or hit the arrow keys to step through the calendar day by day. Click on a state to hear the most popular song by the most popular artist in that state on that day of the year.
It was a super fun app to write. I shall certainly write a bit more about some of the tech involved in the next couple of days.
Music Machinery 
#1 by Giovanni Ribo on October 6, 2014 - 5:37 pm
Pretty interesting stuff, Paul. I am an architecture student beginning my thesis year examining a city within California – Alameda, in particular. I was wondering if you’ve ever considered producing maps on an even smaller regional scale so that people might be able to compare most played artists in Alameda compared to San Francisco, or compared to Berkeley, for example. I have an assumption that music most often played in Alameda would differ a bit from the surrounding cities – but, if I had access to that information/or maps, my argument would be at least a bit stronger!
Maybe we can have a conversation through e-mail, one day.