This article was taken from the February 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Glenn McDonald knows what's on your playlist. As resident "data alchemist" at music-analytics service The Echo Nest (WIRED 02.14), the 47-year-old Bostonian is tasked with studying the vast amounts of listening data generated by Spotify (WIRED 05.14). With more than 50 million users jamming to more than 200 million songs in 1,307 genres, that's a lot of information. "I try to find ways we can make sense of that, and how we can use it," says McDonald.
He publishes his experiments at everynoise.com, where you can track genres based on acoustic profile or follow their development through history.
For WIRED, McDonald gathered data on the listening habits of some of Europe's most rocking cities, to see how they compare. As well as proving which cities are built on rock 'n' roll, and which on hip hop, the data shows the vast number of obscure musical subgenres particular to certain corners of Europe. "Everywhere you look there are really interesting subgenres or scenes you would never have known were there," says McDonald. For example: kizomba, an Angolan genre that's surprisingly popular in Portugal, or discofox, a blend of dance and sentimental pop unique to Germany. "An entire industry is dedicated to this one genre that doesn't exist anywhere else," says McDonald. "There is a whole sociology textbook that could be written on this one data set. It gives you an incredible sense of how varied the world is."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
