City vs City

My City vs. Your City uses data from Last.fm to illustrate differences in musical taste between different cities.

The trouble is, your city needs to have a critical mass of Last.fm users if the comparisons are to be of any use. Look at the current figures for Newcastle versus Leeds: the ranking of artists for Newcastle is just about meaningless, since one or two more plays would shift most of the top 10 artists several places (or, no doubt, elevate some of the artists outside the top 10.) Still, that’s my fault for living in an area where there apparently aren’t many Last.fm users. The basic concept is neat.

The one suggestion I’d make – at least for cities where there’s a big enough user base to make the rankings a tad more representative – would be to display at least the top 25 artists, the better to reveal genuine regional variations once you get past the current half dozen or so acts who are being pushed hard because they have an album out or are on tour.¹

[Via MetaFilter]

1. I suppose this is less of an issue for comparisons between cities on different continents: even Lady Gaga can’t be touring on two continents at the same time. Can she? ↩