You’ll never guess which musicians have their strongest fan base in your state. I’m not necessarily talking about the most listened to artists in each state, I’m talking about the artists your state listens to disproportionately more than the rest of the country. Take a look at this map of the United States created in a study by Paul Lamere of The Echo Nest- it shows the “distinctive artist” for each state who ranks higher in popularity there relative to all the other states:
This isn’t just an arbitrary survey of the residents of these states’ favorite artist, Lamere actually pulls data on the listening behavior of about a quarter million people from 432 various music apps and services. While the names of sources are undisclosed, we can make some guesses based on The Echo Nest’s connections with Clear Channel’s iHeartradio, Rdio, Rhapsody and SiriusXM.
The results for some states are a little more surprising than others- who knew Fall Out Boy had such a strong following in Kentucky? If you want to learn more, you can play around with this web app to check out the differences in listening preferences between two specific states or regions, and see how (or if) your music tastes have been shaped by where you live.
Also interesting is the comparison of this distinctive artist map to one showing each state’s favorite artist in absolute terms, which is dominated by just a couple artists:
