What in the World
Are You Listening To?
Created by Team D#ata
Our Project
Music is a universal language. It brings us joy, triggers memories, and encourages us to
dance. Our music listening habits reflect our lives: what time of year it is, what mood we're in,
what language we speak, or how energetic we may be.
This is why we're interested in exploring music data. To explore what others are listening to is to
explore so much more about how people are feeling right now. Which countries listen to the same
songs and what might that say about the state of those areas? Which artists are popular globally
and what is it that makes them so universally loved? We hope to dive into these questions and more
as we take you through the top songs in each of the 61 countries that listen to Spotify.
Our Data
For this project, we're using Spotify data. With
191 million active users across 61 countries
featuring over 40 million songs, Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services in the
world.
Embedded in each song's metadata is information about the song's dancebility, valence (happiness), acousticness, loudness, and speechiness.
Each of these characteristics has a rating from 0 to 100 that describes where each song falls within each scale.
We're focusing on these metrics to explore similarities and differences in popular music around the world.
Our songs are gathered from the Spotify-generated "Top 50" playlists of
each of the 61 countries Spotify serves (e.g. Argentina's Top 50, etc.).
This data is a snapshot of these playlists as of December 2018. As Spotify reaches a broader audience,
it can tell us more and more about the world's music tastes. For now, we can only gather information
about the 61 countries highlighted on the map below.
Hear Spotify's metrics in action
We use Spotify's metrics to compare music in different playlists.
To get a better sense of Spotify's track attributes, hover over the buttons to hear an
example of a high and low track for each characteristic.
Hover over the arrows!
Choose a country with Spotify
We want to personalize your experience. You can choose a country you musically identify with, a country where you are from, or a country you are interested in comparing to the world. You can return to this page and change your country at any time.
Drag/Zoom to see different parts of the world better
How does music differ across countries?
From the danceability of their playlist to the acousticness of their music, we can visually
see how popular music differs in audio features across the globe.
To compare the "Top 50" playlists across the Spotify's 61 countries, we averaged each
country's metadata across all their "Top 50" playlist. With each audio feature
(danceability, valence, speechiness, loudness, and acousticness) ranging from 0 to 100,
we can visually see how each country's "Top 50" playlist differ in audio features.
What do these audio features mean?
For more information on the definitions of these features, check out Spotify's API Reference Guide
Drag/Zoom to see different parts of the world better
Take a closer look at how your country compares...
Now that you've seen the broader trends around the world, let's look at how your country
compares to others in more detail. Can you find the country that's most similar to yours?
Most different? Perhaps you have dreams of future travels. How do the countries you want to
visit compare to your own in average music taste?
There may be deeper value in considering these comparisons than you think. While the average American
Spotify listener may be quite different from the average Indonesian Spotify listener, the average energy and valence
of the most popular songs in those countries are very similar. Take Reggaeton as an example. According to
Spotify data,
reggaeton's share of music on Spotify grew 119% from 2014 to 2017, compared to pop's growth of
13% and country music's growth of 4%. Following that trend, more songs from around the world borrowed reggaeton's
catchy beat, including the massive Ed Sheeran hit "Shape of You." This suggests that the world may share more
music tastes than we recognize.
Take a look at how your country compares to others on the next page.
Choose a country to compare to yours:
United States
Are your country's top 50 songs also popular around the world?
Each bubble in the following visual represents a unique song that is in at least one country's top 50 playlist. The 50 bubbles accented in blue are the songs found in your country's top 50 playlist. The larger a bubble is, the more countries that have that song in their top 50. Find out which songs that are in your country's top 50 are also enjoyed by other countries and which songs are unique to your country's top 50!
Click a bubble to see its corresponding song's characteristics
Looking for a new playlist to follow? Find out which country suits you best.
Adjust the sliders to discover with which country your tastes are most aligned. Each attribute is on a 1-100 scale.
We hope you've enjoyed your musical trip around the world
These visualizations help us study the formula for what makes a song popular in any given country.
It tells us that music can tie two countries together that might otherwise seem
very different. Appreciating different types of music from around the world brings us together. Looking
at songs like "thank u, next" or "Taki Taki", in nearly every country's Top 50, reminds us that we share connections with people across the
globe in small but significant ways.
We hope you've enjoyed your musical trip and we encourage you to return to the top
page and explore more countries.