Spotify, a popular digital music service, has redesigned its global music map to give travelers and music fans a new way to explore the sounds that define cities around the world. The interactive map lets listeners browse nearly 1,000 city playlists curated from Spotify listening data, making it easy to hear what’s popular or distinctive in a given place.
To build these city playlists, Spotify analyzed roughly 20 billion listener-track interactions to identify the songs that contribute to a city’s musical identity. The result is a collection of playlists that reflect what people in each locale are actually listening to, updated regularly so the selections stay current.
Local artists often benefit significantly from their hometown exposure, and the map highlights those hometown heroes when they rise in popularity. For many listeners, these playlists offer direct access to the sounds and scenes that define local music cultures.
The map and its associated playlists are refreshed twice a month, allowing users to follow evolving trends and discover emerging artists and viral tracks as they gain momentum. This frequent updating keeps the content relevant and helps listeners track how a city’s musical landscape changes over time.
Examples from major cities illustrate the diversity the map captures: in London, Flume’s “Heater” ranks among the top tracks alongside songs by Abra Cadabra and MoStack, while in Los Angeles, Childish Gambino occupies multiple top spots in the city’s most-played list. These snapshots give a sense of both global hits and regionally specific favorites.
Beyond simple popularity, the map highlights “distinctive” music—tracks that are played disproportionately more in one location compared with other places. That feature helps listeners find songs that carry a uniquely local flavor, not just worldwide chart-toppers.
For travelers, music fans, and anyone curious about global pop culture, Spotify’s map provides an accessible way to immerse oneself in the soundtrack of a city. With previews and curated playlists for nearly a thousand cities, audiophiles can explore local scenes, discover rising artists, and get a clearer sense of what makes each city’s sound distinctive.