Exploring regional listening preferences

Cool…I see there are a few ‘hipster’ bands still liked here in the U.S.

Sufjan Stevens, Edward Sharpe, The Shins

Music Machinery

In previous posts we looked at how gender and age can affect listening preferences. Today we take a look at how the location of a listener may affect their listening preferences.

distinctive_artist_map-2

For this study, I sampled the listening preferences of about a quarter million listeners that have a zip code associated with their account. update: Listener data is drawn from a variety of music streaming services that are powered by The Echo Nest. I aggregated these listeners into regions (state, regional and all-US). To compare regions I look at the top-N most popular artists  based upon listener plays in each region and look for artists that have a substantial change in rank between the two regions. These artists are the artists that define the taste for the region.

As an example let’s compare Tennessee to New England. If we look at the top 100 artists listened to in Tennessee and…

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Hip music review…Broken Bells – After the Disco

After_The_Disco_CoverI recently was able to pick up the latest release ‘After the Disco’ from ultimate hipster band Broken Bells. I feel a bit privileged about knowledge of this release due to James Mercer talking about it at the final show of The Shins latest tour which wrapped-up at The Norva Theater in Norfolk.

I was a bit hesitant when listening to this second full-lenght because I thought it could never live up to the genius which was the first Broken Bells release. I think I was also surprised at The Bee Gees sounding single ‘Holding on for Life‘ which came out prior to the rest of the record. Just to let you know…the whole CD does not sound like that.Holding_on_for_Life..and I’m not saying that’s a bad song either…

After the Disco is one of those CDs that just get better each time you play it. Since I’ve been playing it for a while now, I’ve achieved a level of nirvana while listening that is usually reserved for High Llamas and practitioners of transcendental meditation.

You can buy the release on iTunes here. I highly recommend you do.

Broken Bells recently performed on Late Show with David Letterman during Beatles week. Here’s their performance…

Hip quote….Fish Heads

Quote

“Roly poly fish heads are never seen
Drinking cappuccino in Italian restaurants,
With oriental women, yeah…”

~ Barnes & Barnes