A new study has analysed the distinct musical tastes of each US state. It's thrown up more than a few surprises, including the curveball that there are still some people who listen to Matchbox Twenty. Also: people in Nevada really, really love Ciara.
Paul Lamere, the director of developer platform for a music intelligence site called The Echo Nest, used data from Spotify and a host of other music listening services to aggregate the music preferences of a quarter of a million fans in order to figure out musicians were uniquely popular in each US state.
That doesn't mean, however, that Ciara is the most-listened singer in Nevada – it means her slinky R&B enjoys an unusually high level of support among listeners in the state when compared to everywhere else in the country. As Lamere puts it: "These artists are the artists that define the taste for the region." You can head to his blog to find out more about the methods behind the map.
Some of the results are pretty par for the course: it makes total sense that Oregon, home of a billion sensitive guitar-toting troubadors, are really into Kurt Vile, or that Florida are into rolling with their homeboy Rick Ross. Ditto Tennessee's love for Juicy J, who came up in the southern hip hop scene in Memphis as part of the Three 6 Mafia crew.
But aside from Ciara's popularity in Nevada, there are more than a few states that throw their music stereotype way off base. Turns out that bluegrass state Arkansas loves Wiz Khalifa most of all; lawmakers in Washington DC get low to Kelly Rowland; and Idaho – the second-most conservative state in the US – is big into lesbian pop duo Tegan & Sara. Oh, and that somewhere in Arizona, Linkin Park are still incredibly famous (which is nice for Linkin Park).
Lamere has also built an app that lets you compare regional music preferences in the US; you can have a play here. So, when is Britain getting one?
