Spotify Wrapped’s Sound Cities are baffling

It’s probably the most fantastic time of yr — Spotify Wrapped season! Yearly, the music streaming service aggregates its customers’ listening knowledge and presents them with enjoyable little infographics about their most-listened-to artists and songs. Along with the usual issues like your High Artist (Taylor Swift for me) and High Track of the yr (due to an affiliation with an NPC in our D&D sport, mine was Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville”), Spotify likes to get a bit quirky and provide you with different classes like listening archetypes. This yr, one such class was “Sound City,” which supposedly tells you which of them city’s inhabitants has the listening habits most much like yours.

And someway, I bought Provo, Utah.

I imply no offense to individuals who dwell in Provo, Utah, however what the fuck? In line with Spotify, it’s because I take heed to Taylor Swift, Mitski, and Sleeping at Final. Which, all proper, high quality, possibly this particular mixture is extra frequent in Provo than it’s in the remainder of the world. However different folks’s “Sound City” outcomes has me questioning how Spotify calculated this, as a result of individuals who additionally bought Provo have tastes that appear utterly totally different from mine.

For starters, the identical handful of cities maintain popping up (at the very least, judging by studies from my very U.S.-centric social media feeds): Provo, Utah; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Davis, California; Berkeley, California; Bozeman, Montana; Boulder, Colorado; and, maybe mostly, Burlington, Vermont. However it’s not like these cities are producing related music tastes.

I’ve seen Bob Dylan, the Grateful Lifeless, Fiona Apple, Loss of life Grips, and boygenius all related to Burlington as a Sound City entry. In the meantime, Provo is producing a spread of Taylor Swift, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Weezer, and The Strike. The artists are additionally not mutually unique to every city; I’ve seen Taylor almost in all places.

It could possibly be a style factor. Numerous Okay-pop followers have been getting Davis, and lots of people with “pop” as their prime style have additionally gotten Provo. An official assertion from Spotify says that the Sound City outcomes are artist-based, however I do know somebody whose Provo task gave them three tiny indie bands, whereas I had Taylor Swift. Individuals on Twitter maintain joking that Burlington is “for the gays,” in all probability due to MUNA and boygenius, however poking round social media, I’ve realized it’s additionally the Sound City for lots of Gen X Dad music.

For what it’s price, that is what a Spotify consultant informed me:

The Sound City chosen for every eligible consumer has probably the most related style profile to their very own — primarily based on their most streamed artists of the yr and the way these artists are streamed in different cities throughout the globe. It’s goal and completely pushed by a consumer’s listening historical past.

So is the pattern part for a Sound City label simply three particular artists? How did Spotify decide these three, which aren’t even at all times from a listener’s prime 5 teams? What number of cities are even choices? Is everybody in america doomed to get a city on this nation?

My co-worker Samit Sarkar identified that the most typical Sound Cities have been additionally massive school cities. It could possibly be that everybody I do know has the style of faculty college students. Spotify didn’t inform me how every of the cities was chosen as a risk for the map, nevertheless it’s a robust principle. The follow-up query, although, is why?

I merely have no idea. Individuals who I assumed had related music tastes as me maintain sharing screenshots of Berkeley, Burlington, and Boulder, whereas I’ve been “objectively” assigned Provo. One other certainly one of my co-workers summed up the confusion greatest: “The one Burlington I’ve been to is the coat manufacturing facility.”