Data comes from Spotify’s live ‘musical map of the world’ which analyses nearly 20 billion tracksHip Hop is the most listened to genre in the world according to the results of a new ‘musical map of the world’ put together by music streaming service Spotify.
The live map analyses nearly 20 billion tracks and shows local listening trends for over 1000 different cities.
Updated twice a month, users can click on a city of their choice to reveal a playlist featuring the tracks that are ‘distinctive’ to that area. Spotify explained ‘distinctive’ tracks as music that people in one city listen to very frequently, which people in other cities do not listen to very much.
For example, among the most popular artists listened to in London are Jamie xx, rapper JME and Slaves, while popular artists in Edinburgh are currently King Creosote, The View and Twin Atlantic.
Results from the map have also shown that hip hop is the world’s most listened to genre, with hip hop tracks showing up on more playlists per city than any other genre.
Last month Spotify announced it now has 75 million active users, of whom 20 million are paying subscribers.
The streaming service’s number of paying subscribers has doubled since May 2014, when Spotify laid claim to 40 million active users and 10 million paying subscribers. Over the last year, Spotify said in a press release, it has gained a new subscriber on average every three seconds.
Spotify also said that it has now paid out over $3 billion (£1.93 billion) in royalties to artists since launching in 2008, of which $300 million (£193 million) came in the first three months of 2015 alone. The streaming service also claimed that its increase in subscribers will have a sizeable impact on the royalty cheques that each artist receives.
Spotify’s impressive new subscriber figures were published in the same week that Apple announced rival music streaming service Apple Music.
Apple Music launched on June 30. Features include on-demand streaming, social networking that allows artists to connect with their fans and 24/7 radio station Beats 1, spearheaded by former Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe who launched the radio station by playing new Manchester band Spring King
Beats 1 have since announced radio shows hosted by a series of musicians including Dr Dre, Run The Jewels and Vampire Weekend.
