Business Standard

Spotify maps the music

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AFP Paris
London is partial to local hip hop

duo Krept and Kronan and art rock band Everything Everything. Sydney lends its ears to electro dance producer Golden Features. Rio loves funk singer MC Nego do Borel.

Those are the results music streaming service Spotify has highlighted on a new online map of the world it has produced, showing the musical tastes of nearly 1,000 cities in 60 countries.

The Swedish company's site seeks to showcase what non-mainstream tunes are currently running hot among its users around the planet.

But it's not the whole planet: reflecting Spotify's user base, the map essentially focuses on Europe, the Americas and Oceania.
 

Only a few cities in Asia, namely in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan, are shown, and big swathes of the planet -- Africa, the Middle East, India and Russia -- are blank.

For each city that is included, a playlist pops up showing the prevalent tastes of Spotify users there, concentrating on "distinctive" songs -- meaning not the global hits heard worldwide, but usually local or national bands that have earned prominence.

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First Published: Jul 23 2015 | 2:07 AM IST

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