Choosing where to live based on Spotify
What I Would Have Tweeted This Week. Issue #4.
More than a month with no Twitter. It is no longer appropriate to say that it feels good as it doesn’t feel like anything. It just is. I didn’t write an update last week as I was sick and it was day after the ‘terror’ incident in New York — a combination of which made me extremely grumpy.
However, with a few nights sleep and the joy of watching the New York Marathon I’m back. Had I been tweeting last weekend I would have been all over the Marathon. I would have been tweeting messages of support. But I texted or emailed instead. Those people knew I was rooting for them — no need to broadcast that to everybody.
If you are ever in a bad mood just go spend 10 minutes watching the marathon. It’s just one of those occasions when people come together, sharing a common goal. Having said that I didn’t fancy running another one — now that I know I got a qualifying time for both NY and Boston I think I’ll probably run those in 2018 and 2019. Sucker!
Had I been on twitter I would have mentioned the lovely collaboration my favorite running brand,Tracksmith, did with Noah (the new lable from ex Supreme Creative Director). Most of the collection sold out in a day, which is fantastic news for a small brand. I managed to grab a New York singlet which looks pretty epic. Maybe I’ll wear that in my next race rather than my ‘Fuck Trump’ singlet which even though people have said spurs them on when they run is at some point going to get me in trouble.
Sticking with sporting goods. Adidas revealed their 2018 World Cup shirts. The Japan one is beautiful. I’ve never bought a team shirt before — not even an Arsenal one, bit tacky, bit chavvy — but this one is tempting. Very tempting. The bigger picture is that somewhere along the line the adidas design team just kicked into another gear. Where once Nike design was the envy of everyone, now it’s adidas. Maybe it’s just cyclical, maybe it’s cultural maybe people just don’t like Nike any more cos they are drug cheats.
I did read a Wired article about how the Nike Vaporfly elite shoes are showing some signs of legitimately returning more energy to runners at the end of a marathon. If that’s true that will test my resolve as I look to break three hours for a marathon. Sneaky fuckers.
I very nearly tweeted about my citibike being hacked. As I rode home this week there was this cool green light emanating from the front bike light. I assumed some hacker had done this as an art project. I was about to tweet asking who had done this, but I checked and apparently it’s a Citibike initiative that’s been around since January of this year. Phew, almost looked stupid in public there. If you are lucky enough to get a bike with it on, it’s really cool. It projects a little green light onto the road about 20 feet in front of you. As I passed people they said, ‘oh that’s cool’, thinking I had done it.
Onto the main topic. I spend a large amount of time listening to music on Spotify. I’m pretty clinical about keeping the algorithm clean and looking for interesting music. So when I find a band I don’t know I often click on the about tab. This shows a little bio but also where the majority of listeners to that band live.
I still take some stupid pride in finding bands that have almost zero listeners. The best ones are so small they have no bio and no data. Win! But more recently I have been noticing a pattern in the location data. The top five locations for people listening to the new bands that I like are:
- Mexico City
- Santiago
- Berlin
- Brooklyn
- Stockholm
I also listen to a lot of older music. But that tends to be music from my early DJ days, so it’s a little obscure and mostly london based. But if I look at older bands that I like the location data is different:
- London
- New York.
- Brooklyn
- Berlin
- Stockholm.
What does this all mean? I think what it means is that cities like Mexico City and Santiago are new gathering places for young people who like experimental music. Berlin is obviously that kind of place. Stockholm is there, I think because lots of Swedes listen to Spotify so the numbers are always up, but also it’s a cool city.
And this is all because of the internet. You no longer need to be in London or New York to listen to fresh music — like you did twenty years ago. New creative cities are being born because of the web. If you don’t have to commute to London or New York every day to work then why would you live there? If you can live in Santiago or Berlin, wouldn’t that be better? It would certainly be cheaper. And you’re less likely to get bombed or shot. Although of course Mexico City has it’s issues with earthquakes. As more communities start to form in these new cities the case for the old centers of economic power become less and less attractive. Add in the types of things we are seeing about self driving cars and helicopters and everything to do with deciding on where you live becomes very interesting.
With more choice on where to live how would you decide? The Spotify listeners algorithm is as good as anything else.
