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.

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 see which artists fall the furthest on the New England chart we find these 10 artists:

The first artist, Hillsong United is the 97th most popular artist in Tennessee for our sample of listeners. In New England, Hillsong United drops all the way to the 1097th artist, a drop in rank of 1,000. Hillsong United is a Christian rock worship band. Tennessee listeners, living in the heart of the U.S. Bible Belt, listen to Hillsong United much more than their New England counterparts. Second on the Tennessee list is Juicy J,a rapper, songwriter and record producer from Memphis, Tennessee. Third is Young Jeezy from nearby Atlanta Georgia. The rest of the top 10 is dominated by southern rappers, country, and folk artists.

Now let’s look at top 100 New England artists and see which artists fall furthest on the Tennessee charts:

New England tastes run to jam bands, indie and classic rock.

Exploring Region differences on your own

I built an app that makes it easy to explore the regional differences in music. With the app you can select two regions and it will show you which artists are distinctive for each region.

Using this approach we can pick a single signature artist for each state. I do this by finding the top most distinctive popular artist for a state that hasn’t already been selected for a more populous state. Here’s the list of signature state artists:

State Name State Rank US Rank Change AK Ginger Kwan 33 12062 -12029 AL The Civil Wars 34 110 -76 AR Wiz Khalifa 15 69 -54 AZ Linkin Park 47 98 -51 CA Bonobo 28 85 -57 CO The Naked And Famous 48 125 -77 CT David Guetta 43 80 -37 DE Rush 38 385 -347 FL Rick Ross 44 103 -59 GA Future 33 226 -193 HI J Boog 40 4703 -4663 IA B.o.B 32 82 -50 ID Tegan and Sara 31 107 -76 IL Sufjan Stevens 38 68 -30 IN Blake Shelton 31 91 -60 KS Eric Church 48 162 -114 KY Fall Out Boy 17 59 -42 LA Kevin Gates 15 1359 -1344 MA Neil Young 49 128 -79 MD Kelly Rowland 45 217 -172 ME R.E.M. 28 197 -169 MI Young Jeezy 34 138 -104 MN Metric 41 211 -170 MO The Shins 29 67 -38 MS August Alsina 42 909 -867 MT Tim McGraw 36 187 -151 NC Miguel 37 88 -51 ND Stone Sour 47 735 -688 NE Bastille 48 89 -41 NH Grateful Dead 29 191 -162 NJ Bruce Springsteen 23 109 -86 NM Alan Jackson 45 425 -380 NV Ciara 34 106 -72 NY James Blake 47 130 -83 OH Florida Georgia Line 26 75 -49 OK Jason Aldean 24 84 -60 OR Kurt Vile 49 212 -163 PA Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros 43 77 -34 RI Nirvana 48 126 -78 SC Hillsong United 24 262 -238 SD Hinder 42 1154 -1112 TN Juicy J 47 151 -104 TX George Strait 16 199 -183 UT AWOLNATION 31 111 -80 VA Dave Matthews Band 48 113 -65 VT Phish 5 353 -348 WA The Head and the Heart 22 83 -61 WI Jack Johnson 45 99 -54 WV matchbox twenty 48 282 -234 WY Dirty Heads 48 1334 -1286

It is pretty clear that people in different parts of the US listen to different kinds of music. These regionalisms can be used to help recommend music for people when you otherwise might not know anything about their music taste.

Note – the base map in the visualizations is shaded by population density.