This year I was again in charge of tabulating the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Music Critics Poll. My ongoing statistical hyperindex to my tabulation years of the poll (2008-2014, so far) is here:  

Pazz & Jop Stats  

My short essay-ish write-up about this year for the Voice is here:  

Pazz & Jop Tabulation Notes  

The published and statistical versions of my own ballot are here:  

glenn mcdonald 2014 at villagevoice.com
glenn mcdonald at furia.com/pjs  
 

I also want to note that I felt as strongly about my #1 album vote this year as I ever have. I wasn't really expecting anybody else to vote for it, but I admit I had hoped that somehow somebody would. I contend that this album offers a historically unprecedented and culturally significant listening opportunity.  

 

Also, here is a Spotify sampler playlist for the poll's top albums, and another one of all the songs that got 5+ votes in the poll and are available on Spotify:  

 
 

And while your reaction to all this is probably not going to be "Yes, sure, but let's hear a lot more music glenn liked", here are my short (sic) lists for albums and songs:  

 
 

And lastly, just for fun, I took the list of artists who got at least 10 composite points this year (album points plus 2 points per song-vote) and ran it through a thing I have at work for auto-booking a hypothetical festival. This tries to auto-arrange the artists into thematic clusters as might appear on parallel-schedule festival-stages, and then suggest some additional artists who aren't on the list for each stage. Here, then, is the lineup for the 2014 Autobooked Pazz & Jop Music Festival:  

Stage 1 - (various styles)  

Starring:
- D'Angelo
- St. Vincent
- The War On Drugs
- Taylor Swift
- FKA twigs
- Sturgill Simpson
- Spoon
- Angel Olsen
- Miranda Lambert
- Sharon Van Etten
- Parquet Courts
- Beck
- Caribou
- Sun Kil Moon
- Swans
- Future Islands
- Lana Del Rey
- Jenny Lewis
- The New Pornographers
- Wussy  

With:
- Washed Out
- Purity Ring
- Mariee Sioux
- Wavves
- Still Corners
- No Joy
- Kasey Chambers
- Weekend
- Twin Shadow
- Micachu
- BLOUSE
- Small Black
- Oberhofer
- Young Prisms
- Class Actress
- Yuck
- Lotus Plaza
- Youth Lagoon
- Poliça
- Dark Dark Dark  
 

Stage 2 - alternative hip hop, hip hop, trap music, pop rap, underground hip hop, rap  

Starring:
- Run the Jewels
- Azealia Banks
- Y.G.
- Freddie Gibbs
- Nicki Minaj
- Rich Gang
- Future
- Shabazz Palaces
- Pharrell Williams
- Vince Staples
- Open Mike Eagle
- Schoolboy Q
- Young Thug
- Isaiah Rashad
- Kendrick Lamar
- J. Cole
- Iggy Azalea
- BIG K.R.I.T
- DJ Quik
- Pharoahe Monch  

With:
- YelaWolf
- Joey Bada$$
- The Weeknd
- Kid Ink
- Rich Homie Quan
- MellowHigh
- WZRD
- Gunplay
- Ca$h Out
- Lil Debbie
- Frank Ocean
- Theophilus London
- A$AP Rocky
- Action Bronson
- Childish Gambino
- XV
- Flo Rida
- JJ DOOM
- MellowHype
- Flatbush Zombies  
 

Stage 3 - contemporary jazz, contemporary post-bop, avant-garde jazz, cool jazz, jazz  

Starring:
- Mark Turner
- John Coltrane
- Ambrose Akinmusire
- Darius Jones
- Steve Lehman Octet
- The Bad Plus
- MARC RIBOT TRIO
- Bill Frisell
- Brian Blade and The Fellowship Band
- Matthew Shipp
- Tony Bennett
- Jemeel Moondoc
- Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden
- Sun Ra Arkestra
- Craig Handy
- Miles Davis
- George Cables
- The Nels Cline Singers
- Sonny Rollins
- Vijay Iyer  

With:
- David Hazeltine
- Eldar Djangirov
- Christian Scott
- Tigran Hamasyan
- Matana Roberts
- Danny Grissett
- Fieldwork
- Bob Berg
- Bob Moses
- Taylor Eigsti
- Baptiste Trotignon
- Michel Petrucciani
- Gerald Clayton
- Gilad Hekselman
- Edward Simon
- Omer Avital
- Ari Hoenig
- Julian Lage
- Ravi Coltrane
- Jacky Terrasson  
 

Stage 4 - brutal death metal, death metal, deathgrind, metal, grindcore  

Starring:
- Behemoth
- Morbus Chron
- Opeth
- Oath
- BABYMETAL
- Horrendous
- At the Gates
- Dead Congregation
- Incantation
- Swallowed
- Edguy
- Abysmal Dawn
- Cardiac Arrest
- Job for a Cowboy
- Pyrrhon
- Execration
- Machinae Supremacy
- Sectu
- Aevangelist
- Cannabis Corpse  

With:
- Bloodbath
- Nader Sadek
- Necros Christos
- Antropomorphia
- Man Must Die
- Hail of Bullets
- Catamenia
- Eternal Tears of Sorrow
- Kalmah
- Anaal Nathrakh
- Skinless
- Desultory
- Necrophobic
- Nunslaughter
- Benighted
- The Duskfall
- Ulcerate
- Severe Torture
- Repugnant
- Centinex  
 

Stage 5 - future garage, bass music, footwork, wonky, indie r&b  

Starring:
- Flying Lotus
- Aphex Twin
- Actress
- Taylor McFerrin
- The Soft Pink Truth
- Clark
- Objekt
- Lone
- Leon Vynehall
- DJ Dodger Stadium
- SBTRKT
- Myrkur
- Starfoxxx
- Untold
- RL Grime
- Bug
- Mndsgn
- DJ Rashad
- Disclosure
- Rustie  

With:
- Gerry Read
- Afta-1
- Hudson Mohawke
- Jamie XX
- Clubroot
- Lil Silva
- Débruit
- Knxwledge
- Two Fingers
- iTAL tEK
- Flako
- Cosmin TRG
- Koreless
- Free The Robots
- Dauwd
- TNGHT
- Letherette
- Julio Bashmore
- Groundislava
- Ras G  
 

Stage 6 - post-metal, sludge metal, stoner metal, black sludge, drone  

Starring:
- Pallbearer
- Yob
- Eyehategod
- Godflesh
- Thou
- Mastodon
- Midnight
- Inter Arma
- Earth
- Coffinworm
- Floor
- Old Man Gloom
- Kitty
- Body Count
- Wreck and Reference
- Wolf Blood
- Tombs
- The Flight of Sleipnir
- Lord Mantis
- Nadja  

With:
- Whitehorse
- Elder
- Talbot
- 16
- Helms Alee
- Acid Witch
- Wolvhammer
- Amenra
- Bongripper
- Dragged Into Sunlight
- Cough
- Ides Of Gemini
- Horn of the Rhino
- Atriarch
- Reverend Bizarre
- The Atlas Moth
- Herem
- Black Tusk
- Bongzilla
- Black Math Horseman  
 

Stage 7 - chaotic hardcore, straight edge, hardcore, hardcore punk, power violence  

Starring:
- GridLink
- Fucked Up
- Cold World
- Trap Them
- Cretin
- Off
- Enabler
- Tree
- Raw Power
- Thumbscrew
- Bully
- Trash Talk
- 7 Seconds
- Code Orange
- Foreseen
- Give
- Haymaker
- Homewrecker
- Horsebastard
- The Mongoloids  

With:
- Expire
- Full Of Hell
- Backtrack
- Nails
- Code Orange Kids
- Dead In the Dirt
- Minority Unit
- Harm's Way
- Incendiary
- Oathbreaker
- Downpresser
- The Secret
- Trapped Under Ice
- Mammoth Grinder
- No Warning
- All Pigs Must Die
- Torch Runner
- Dead End Path
- The First Step
- Down to Nothing  
 

Stage 8 - outsider house, detroit techno, techno, acid house, chicago house  

Starring:
- Andy Stott
- Theo Parrish
- Moodymann
- Kassem Mosse
- Francis Harris
- Joey Anderson
- Perc
- Container
- Omar S.
- Gesloten Cirkel
- Function
- Boonlorm
- Christian Löffler
- Hieroglyphic Being
- Joris Voorn
- Juju & Jordash
- Reagenz
- Xosar  

With:
- Recondite
- LoSoul
- Redshape
- Shifted
- Smallpeople
- Christopher Rau
- Donato Dozzy
- Voices from the Lake
- Tin Man
- Floorplan
- Petar Dundov
- Black Jazz Consortium
- John Roberts
- Jacob Korn
- Tevo Howard
- Steffi
- Mike Dehnert
- Tony Lionni
- Vakula
- Conforce  
 

Stage 9 - atmospheric black metal, pagan black metal, black metal, post-metal, avantgarde metal  

Starring:
- Triptykon
- Agalloch
- Alcest
- Botanist
- Woods of Desolation
- Blut aus Nord
- Darkspace
- Primordial
- Wolves in the Throne Room
- Sólstafir
- Harakiri for the Sky
- Mutilation Rites
- Raspberry Bulbs
- Spectral Lore
- Thantifaxath  

With:
- Amesoeurs
- Les Discrets
- Lifelover
- Winterfylleth
- An Autumn For Crippled Children
- Oranssi Pazuzu
- Woods of Ypres
- Hate Forest
- Altar of Plagues
- Kauan
- October Falls
- Ne Obliviscaris
- Ulver
- Lunar Aurora
- Glorior Belli
- Secrets of the Moon
- Negură Bunget
- Dark Fortress
- Walknut
- Lantlôs  
 

Stage 10 - orgcore, alternative emo, folk punk, melodic hardcore, punk  

Starring:
- Against Me!
- Joyce Manor
- The Menzingers
- Sugar Stems
- The Cold Beat
- Restorations
- Mariachi El Bronx
- Cheap Girls
- Antarctigo Vespucci
- Black Wine
- Brick Mower
- Chuck Ragan
- The Lawrence Arms
- Rancid  

With:
- The Horrible Crowes
- Masked Intruder
- The Dopamines
- Iron Chic
- Banner Pilot
- Larry and His Flask
- Nothington
- Candy Hearts
- Off With Their Heads
- Elway
- The Gaslight Anthem
- Apologies, I Have None
- Direct Hit!
- Dear Landlord
- The Arrivals
- Red City Radio
- Tom Gäbel
- Spraynard
- Jeff Rosenstock
- Dave Hause  
 

Stage 11 - retro metal, space rock, stoner metal, stoner rock  

Starring:
- Temples
- Cayetana
- Sweet Apple
- Truckfighters
- Colour Haze
- Pontiak
- Blues Pills
- Black Bombaim
- Comet Control
- Kyng
- Mount Carmel
- Verma  

With:
- Stoned Jesus
- Samsara Blues Experiment
- Five Horse Johnson
- Asteroid
- The Flying Eyes
- Kadavar
- My Sleeping Karma
- Horisont
- Monkey3
- Mars Red Sky
- Greenleaf
- Birth Of Joy
- Tweak Bird
- Graveyard
- Wo Fat
- Radio Moscow
- Lonely Kamel
- Causa Sui
- Siena Root
- Quest For Fire  
 

Stage 12 - world, afrobeat, mande pop, highlife  

Starring:
- William Onyeabor
- Tinariwen
- Orlando Julius
- Kasai Allstars
- Tony Allen
- Dobet Gnahoré
- Francis Bebey
- Hassan Hakmoun
- Ibibio Sound Machine
- Malawi Mouse Boys  

With:
- Fatoumata Diawara
- Franco
- CHEIKH LO
- Terakaft
- The Souljazz Orchestra
- Vieux Farka Touré
- AfroCubism
- Lokua Kanza
- Bombino
- Ayub Ogada
- Ismaël Lô
- Papa Wemba
- Staff Benda Bilili
- Tamikrest
- Bonga
- Issa Bagayogo
- Victor Démé
- Geoffrey Oryema
- Ballaké Sissoko
- Daktaris  
 

Stage 13 - k-pop, k-hop  

Starring:
- f(x)
- Seo Tai-Ji
- After School
- 홍진영(HONG JIN YOUNG)
- Infinite
- Crucial Star
- Jiyeon  

With:
- EXID
- 블락비 (Block B)
- 티아라
- 걸스데이
- EXO-K
- 백지영
- Orange Caramel
- VIXX
- 태양
- EXO-M
- 씨엔블루
- 휘성
- 김현아
- F.Cuz
- B1A4
- Epik High
- Big Mama
- Boyfriend
- 윤하
- 유키스  
 

Stage 14 - southern soul  

Starring:
- Grady Champion
- Sir Charles Jones
- T. K. SOUL
- O.B. Buchana
- Theodis Ealey
- Vick Allen  

With:
- Latimore
- Marvin Sease
- Mel Waiters
- J. Blackfoot
- Willie Clayton
- Big Bub
- Donnie Ray
- Bigg Robb
- Roy C
- Ms. Jody
- Barbara Carr
- Omar Cunningham
- Jeff Floyd
- Floyd Taylor
- Peggy Scott
- Lee Shot WIlliams
- Carl Sims
- Wendell B.
- Sheba Potts-Wright
- J Blackfoot  
 

Stage 15 - dub, reggae, roots reggae  

Starring:
- Jack Ruby
- Black Roots
- Bunny Lee
- Hollie Cook
- Horace Andy
- Zvuloon Dub System  

With:
- Dubmatix
- Ijahman Levi
- Clinton Fearon
- The Viceroys
- Pablo Moses
- Kiddus I
- Niney the Observer
- Winston McAnuff
- Jacob Miller
- Nucleus Roots
- Capital Letters
- The Revolutionaries
- Junior Delgado
- Little Roy
- Hugh Mundell
- Black Slate
- The Itals
- Cornell Campbell
- Tappa Zukie
- Twinkle Brothers  
 

Stage 16 - australian alternative rock, australian indie  

Starring:
- Courtney Barnett
- The Preatures
- The Jezabels
- Chet Faker
- King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
- Laura Jean  

With:
- Emma Louise
- seth sentry
- San Cisco
- Loon Lake
- Angus Stone
- Northeast Party House
- YesYou
- Clubfeet
- The Griswolds
- Art of Sleeping
- The Jungle Giants
- Gold Fields
- The Cast Of Cheers
- Last Dinosaurs
- Mat McHugh
- The Delta Riggs
- Bonjah
- Diafrix
- Hayden Calnin
- Matt Corby  
 

Stage 17 - bossa nova, mpb, samba, brazilian pop music  

Starring:
- Bebel Gilberto
- Caetano Veloso
- Juçara Marçal
- BossaCucaNova
- Gilson  

With:
- Mariana Aydar
- Tribalistas
- Maria Rita
- Tim Maia
- Maria Bethânia
- Mônica Salmaso
- Vanessa da Mata
- Adriana Calcanhotto
- Emílio Santiago
- CéU
- Luiz Melodia
- Tamba Trio
- Fernanda Takai
- Edu Lôbo
- Gonzaguinha
- Rosalia de Souza
- Nara Leão
- Os Cariocas
- Maria Creuza
- Toquinho  
 

Stage 18 - soca  

Starring:
- Popcaan
- Chronixx
- Bunji Garlin
- Duane Stephenson
- Blackie  

With:
- Million Stylez
- QQ
- Skarra Mucci
- Charly Black
- Protoje
- Khago
- Cherine Anderson
- Alaine
- Tessanne Chin
- Jah Vinci
- Romain Virgo
- Serani
- Voicemail
- Bugle
- Konshens
- Tanya Stephens
- RDX
- Lil Rick
- Gappy Ranks
- Future Fambo

The February 2015 issue of Wired UK has a short piece and infographic about European music-genre-listening preferences, derived from some data I prepared for them (from the same underlying sources as The Sound of European Cities).  

I am amused and unreasonably delighted to point out that my new Aedliga EP, The Clock of the Cold, is on the Spotify new-release list this week. It's safely way down at the bottom where nobody would ever find it by accident, but if you hit Control-F and type "Aedliga" you can see that it's there. Unless it's after 29 December 2014 as you're reading this, in which case you missed my tiny moment and will just have to trust me that it happened.  

But the music still exists, and it's in the nature of digital music that it doesn't generally get any worse than it was when it was new. Nor longer! And format-wise, if you're Spotify-averse for some reason, the EP is also on Soundcloud, and the songs and lyrics are also available directly from aedliga.com for the fairly reasonable price of the time it will take you to listen to them.

Spotify just published the super-cool #YearInMusic thing, which shows a variety of statistical excerpts and summaries of both Spotify global listening and (if you're a Premium subscriber) your own for 2014.  

Among other things, the global feature includes an editorial citation (which I had nothing to do with picking) for 2014's "Breakout Genre", Metropopolis.  

You might not have heard of Metropopolis. A few people who also hadn't heard of it wrote indignant articles about this fact:  

- Here Is Spotify's List of the Most Streamed Music of 2014, or What the Fuck Is Metropopolis? (from Noisey/Vice)
- Stop trying to make "metropopolis" happen: How Spotify forged a dubious new musical genre (from Salon)  

Conversely, hundreds of people who hadn't heard of it either have now subscribed to the playlist that demonstrates what it means.  

It doesn't actually much matter what it's called, I think. It's not a breakout genre name, it's a set of music that was breaking out in 2014. If you don't know what the name means, click the link and listen to it, and then you'll know. I don't care if it "happens", I care that you find more music you might love, and this might be some of it.  

But it does also have a name, and I happen to know the story of how there came to be a thing with this name.  
 
 

One of the things I watch over at work is the Echo Nest / Spotify list of genres. A genre can be any of many kinds of things, and can be varying degrees of known or unknown. In practical terms, "genre" for us kind of just means "thematic listening cluster", and our goal as we have expanded the list is to find and name and track as many such thematic listening clusters as we can identify in the world.  

In most cases, these clusters exist in the world with a name. "Album rock" is a thing. "Samba" and "Nintendocore" and "Sega" are things (and Sega has nothing to do with Nintendocore!). We can model and track these, and make playlists to express them, but we don't have to name them.  

But not all the clusters we find come with already-culturally-established names. What do you call the emerging cluster of loosely r&b-derived, often synthpop-orchestrated, generally sensual music that people like Frank Ocean and How to Dress Well are making? Various music-critics have suggested "pbr&b", "hipster r&b" and "r-neg-b", but most people who like the kind of music we're talking about don't know those terms. We originally named this cluster "r-neg-b", because of those three that was the one with the lowest amount of smug derision. But people kept accusing us of making that up, so we recently switched to calling it "indie r&b", on the theory that the music is kind of a cross between indie pop/rock/folk and r&b, and at least maybe you can guess what "indie r&b" might mean, whereas "r-neg-b" reads like a character-encoding error.  

Or sometimes multiple clusters come with the same name. When you say "trap", for example, do you mean trap or trap? One is a hip-hop subgenre, the other is a largely-instrumental electronic subgenre. For our list, then, we have opted to eliminate the ambiguity by calling the hip-hop one "trap music" and the electronic one "trapstep". There's nothing magically right about those names, but they are at least different from each other.  

And then, sometimes, because at Spotify we have maybe more data about human music-listening patterns than has ever existed before, we find clusters that you otherwise probably wouldn't be able to isolate, and thus wouldn't even have thought to name. For example, you know those rousing neo-rustic folk/pop-ish artists like Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers that kind of sound like Dave Matthews ran over a jug band? We have the data to make a listening cluster around those with hundreds of other someway-similar bands. If you like that kind of music, you'll probably enjoy listening to this cluster. But it doesn't come with a name, exactly. So we called it "stomp and holler". We didn't totally make up that term, but it wasn't a genre name before we said so.  

And you could argue that it still isn't a genre name, really, after we said so. This is fine. We don't have a philosophical or taxonomical agenda, we just have these clusters of awesome (usually) (to somebody) music, and we need some words to use as labels on a map, or as titles on playlists. When I have to make up names, I try to do so using the absolute minimum amount of creativity necessary to produce a unique new phrase, and thus we get a lot of rather mundane coinages like Malaysian pop and traditional reggae and atmospheric black metal. Sometimes I resolve name-ambiguity by the innovative linguistic wizardry of adding the words "more" or "deep", and thus we get a series of methodical techno clusters called deep house, deeper house and more deeper house. On the one hand, these are dopey names. On the other hand, if you like that kind of music, I'm betting that, in the same way that I continue to listen to BUMP OF CHICKEN, you'll still like listening to it long after you get over the name. (Or embrace it.)  

Every once in a while, though, I lack the imagination to think of a boring name, and am thus forced to settle for a creative one. This is how the cluster of theatrical melodic metal with mostly operatic female vocals came to be called fallen angel. This is how the cluster of music that can sometimes sound like people singing distractedly while dissolving parchment sheet-music in beakers of gurgling solvent came to be called laboratorio. This is how the cluster of music that used to be New Wave only we're still listening to it now that it's old came to be called permanent wave. This is how we came to have shimmer pop and shiver pop and soul flow. I'd pick duller names if I could, but the names just exist to get you to the music.  

The music, in all cases, is actually picked by computer programs using math to distill massive quantities of data. No matter what label I apply, these clusters exist because the world of people who make, listen to and write about music has collaboratively brought them into being by playing and listening and writing in particular combinations of patterns. In most cases, the computer programs use all this data to do two things: first they try to pick a set of cluster-appropriate artists, and then they try to pick those artists' most cluster-appropriate songs.  

This often works, but not always. Take, for example, piano rock. The numbers we calculate to characterize songs don't identify individual instruments, so if you let the computers pick artists that fit the "piano rock" mold, you get a bunch of rock with pianos, but also a bunch of similar rock by bands that don't actually ever use pianos. We could have let this happen, and renamed the cluster "post-maudlin rock", but in the spirit of avoiding smug derision, we instead went through the artist-list by hand and made it deliver, at least roughly, on the promise of "piano rock".  

And this is how we got metropopolis, too. I was listening, at one point, to a lot of indietronica, but when the computers made their indietronica playlist, I found that about half of it sounded like Chairlift and Chvrches to me, but half of it didn't. Which wasn't a problem, because "indietronica" doesn't have to sound like Chairlift and Chvrches, it just has to sound indie and tronic. But I wanted the cluster that did sound like Chairlift and Chvrches. So I made it. I had some other candidate names that I have since forgotten, but "metropopolis" seemed obviously better than the others as soon as it occurred to me, some kind of shiny aesthetic futurism with an insidious dystopian undertone.  

I watch over this cluster myself. The computers are actually pretty good at suggesting potential additions, but I take the time to go through and listen to each one, and only put them into the cluster if they sound sufficiently metropopolistic. This is, from my point of view, an admission of temporary defeat. The computers ought to be able to do this by themselves. If we had a few more dimensions of audio analysis, quantifying just a few more psychoacoustic attributes, maybe we could isolate the precise buoyant glitteriness I hear, or the kind of resigned muting of energy that distinguishes some of the data candidates I reject. I don't, ultimately, think this cluster is any different from liquid funk or doo wop. It's a thing, I can hear it. The computers can't hear it yet. And I wanted to listen to it more than I wanted to wait for them to learn.

To heroically understate the situation, I am not personally a fan of Christmas music.  

But it's my job to help you enjoy the music you enjoy, not the music I enjoy. If you are one of the many, many people who enjoy Christmas music, this is your time of year, and to help you enjoy your time of year in the specific manner you enjoy most, the genre system I work on at Spotify actually has several subvariations of Christmas music:  

Every Noise at Once - xmas genres  

But according to our data, this is still just the surface of the seasonal alternate-reality. With a sufficiently jolly bias for inclusion and a merry tolerance of error we can find at least one maybe-genre-related maybe-xmas song for more than 1200 of our 1300+ genres. And, in fact, we can not only attempt to make xmas playlists for all genres, but we can then even rank the genres by how xmas-related they are, which is interesting information for both people who want to find xmas music and people who want to avoid it.  

Every Noise at Once - all genres sorted by xmasness  

But this sorting and filtering is all stuff I do normally, for my own purposes. If there is to be a non-denominational Xmas cleanly separable from the religious Christmas, it should probably revolve around the spirits of generosity and giving, which call for gestures that you don't merely do for yourself.  

And so, in what I hope is this spirit, I have also made you this gift:  

 

This is an algorithmically-generated xmas-specific manipulation of my genre map. It is the ultimate ornament, I think, a symbol-mosaic composited out of unsilent nights. I didn't draw the tree, I manipulated math so that the tree would self-organize that way. (Drawing it would have been faster.) Math doesn't believe or disbelieve, but it can multiply anybody's joy.

I've been recording songs, however ineptly and infrequently, for a long time. Most of them have been on this site for hypothetical downloading (here). I don't sell them. If you take time out of your life to listen to them, that seems like a fair exchange to me.  

They're now also on Spotify, so that you can not only listen to them, but even intermingle them with real music in playlists.  

I've always just put my own name on them, but there are a bunch of people who share my name, and one of them already has an album that isn't mine on Spotify. So I've hereby and retroactively adopted the band-name Aedliga. This is pronounced "AID-li-guh", and has no meaning. It was also the name of one of my songs a few years ago, in which context it also meant nothing, but was the title track for that notional EP, so that there is now "Aedliga" by Aedliga on Aedliga. And there's aedliga.com and @aedliga, and furia.com/isthisbandnametaken now dutifully reports that the name is taken.  

I'll let you know when the T-shirts are ready.

I make a very sidebarred appearance in the November 2014 Harper's Magazine Readings section (page 21), where they list some of the genres that amused them in my genre map. The choices seem a little random to me (why is "Yugoslav rock" funny?), and I can't explain why they felt "Viking" had to be capitalized, but it's cool to appear in a magazine I actually used to read.

I had limited expectations for applying the logic from The Sounds of Places, which is based on whole countries, to individual cities. Cities are smaller than countries, and data-wise, smaller usually means more random.  

And maybe there is more randomness, overall, but there's enough non-randomness to be intriguing. Or, to put this another way, any chance that I wouldn't publish this evaporated when The Sound of Dundee turned out to, in fact, include the immortal "The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee" by Gloryhammer.  

The Sounds of US Cities
The Sounds of European Cities

At work I've been looking at the distinctive collective music listening of individual US cities. A lot of this, as you might imagine, turns out to be local music from in or near each city, or pop music with some sort of regional connection.  

But statistically, the most popular "national" hits tend to get mixed in with the local stuff at some point, through sheer ubiquity. Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" is the most obvious example of this at the moment, a song so popular that it's basically representative of the distinctive listening of humans, or at least of American humans who use Spotify.  

For amusement, though, here is a ranking of major US Cities by where on their most-distinctive current song chart "Shake It Off" ranks as of today. The cities at the top are the ones who have surrendered most unreservedly to "Shake It Off", either through genuine disproportionate enthusiasm, and/or because they just don't have anything better of their own to play. The ones at the bottom have maintained the strongest resistance to this invasion. The >100s at the very bottom show the cities where immunity is so strong that "Shake It Off" doesn't even make the top 100 most-distinctive songs.  

#	City
1	Arlington VA
1	Chandler
1	Gilbert
1	Mesa
2	Akron
2	Albany
2	Anchorage
2	Cleveland
2	New Haven
2	Pasadena
2	Tucson
2	Worcester
3	Alexandria
3	Des Moines
3	Orange
3	Scottsdale
3	Vancouver
3	Wilmington DE
4	Hoboken
4	Plano
4	Pompano Beach
5	Gainesville
5	Hartford
5	Somerville
5	Syracuse
5	Tacoma
5	Wichita
6	Bellevue
6	Providence
6	Reno
6	State College
7	Colorado Springs
7	Santa Clara
8	Aurora
8	Little Rock
9	Littleton
9	Tempe
10	East Lansing
10	Tampa
10	Trenton
10	Virginia Beach
11	Irvine
11	Sunnyvale
12	Albuquerque
12	Chicago
13	Boise
13	Boston
13	Cambridge
13	Las Vegas
13	Philadelphia
13	Silver Spring
13	Spokane
14	Dayton
14	Jacksonville
14	Miami Beach
14	Overland Park
15	Durham
15	Eugene
15	Lexington
15	St. Louis
16	Raleigh
16	Washington DC
17	Boca Raton
17	Springfield MO
18	Greensboro
18	Greenville
18	Spring
19	Cincinnati
19	Hyattsville
19	Murfreesboro
20	Fremont
20	Fresno
20	Ithaca
20	Tallahassee
21	Bloomington
21	Indianapolis
21	Pittsburgh
23	Corona
23	Phoenix
24	Frisco
25	Columbia MO
26	Ann Arbor
26	Denton
26	San Luis Obispo
26	West Palm Beach
27	Grand Rapids
27	Madison
27	Norman
28	Norfolk
29	Jersey City
29	Orlando
29	San Jose
30	Lawrence
30	Louisville
31	Bakersfield
31	Omaha
32	New York
32	Richmond
33	Salt Lake City
34	Columbus
34	Lewisville
34	Oklahoma City
35	Milwaukee
36	Wilmington NC
37	Columbia SC
37	Santa Barbara
38	San Diego
39	Charleston
40	Lincoln
40	Toledo
41	Long Beach
41	Riverside
41	St. Paul
42	Urbana
43	Berkeley
44	Katy
44	Minneapolis
45	Buffalo
46	Stockton
47	El Paso
49	Fort Collins
54	Charlotte
55	Chapel Hill
55	Kansas City
55	Knoxville
55	Tulsa
56	New Orleans
57	Denver
58	Farmington
60	Concord
60	San Antonio
64	Baton Rouge
67	Birmingham
68	Hayward
73	Mountain View
81	Whittier
83	Seattle
85	Humble
86	Atlanta
86	Santa Monica
87	Grand Prairie
92	Memphis
>100	APO
>100	Anaheim
>100	Arlington TX
>100	Athens
>100	Austin
>100	Baltimore
>100	Boulder
>100	The Bronx
>100	Brooklyn
>100	College Station
>100	Dallas
>100	Detroit
>100	Fort Lauderdale
>100	Fort Worth
>100	Hialeah
>100	Hollywood FL
>100	Honolulu
>100	Houston
>100	Irving
>100	Los Angeles
>100	Lubbock
>100	Mesquite
>100	Miami
>100	Nashville
>100	Newark
>100	Oakland
>100	Portland OR
>100	Provo
>100	Rochester
>100	Sacramento
>100	San Francisco
>100	Santa Ana

 

Presumably none of this will bother Taylor, but "people who are not going to listen disproportionately are going to not listen disproportionately" wouldn't fit the meter of the song very well, so I assume that's why she didn't mention it.

For another way to look at the data from my examination of the distinctive music-listening of US cities, I ranked the top 10 cities by distinctive affiliation to some major genres.  
 

acoustic pop  

1	Spokane
2	Knoxville
3	Grand Rapids
4	St. Paul
5	Norman
6	Birmingham
7	Nashville
8	Austin
9	Madison
10	Athens

 

alternative country  

1	Nashville
2	Louisville
3	Raleigh
4	Frisco
5	Charleston
6	Fort Worth
7	Birmingham
8	College Station
9	Grand Prairie
10	Greenville

 

alternative dance  

1	San Francisco
2	Santa Monica
3	Tucson
4	New York
5	Tempe
6	Pasadena
7	San Diego
8	Gainesville
9	Chicago
10	San Luis Obispo

 

bachata  

1	Newark
2	The Bronx
3	Jersey City
4	Miami
5	Hollywood FL
6	Brooklyn
7	Fort Lauderdale
8	Hialeah
9	West Palm Beach
10	Tampa

 

banda  

1	Mountain View
2	Mesquite
3	Irving
4	Newark
5	Concord
6	Oakland
7	Santa Ana
8	Anaheim
9	Bakersfield
10	Los Angeles

 

ccm  

1	Springfield MO
2	Grand Rapids
3	Oklahoma City
4	Spokane
5	Birmingham
6	Tulsa
7	St. Paul
8	Colorado Springs
9	Knoxville
10	Norman

 

chillwave  

1	San Francisco
2	Santa Monica
3	Portland OR
4	Seattle
5	Brooklyn
6	New York
7	Pasadena
8	New Orleans
9	Berkeley
10	San Diego

 

contemporary country  

1	Des Moines
2	Lincoln
3	Omaha
4	Indianapolis
5	Columbia MO
6	Akron
7	APO
8	Dayton
9	Lexington
10	Albuquerque

 

country  

1	APO
2	Indianapolis
3	Akron
4	Albuquerque
5	Des Moines
6	Omaha
7	Columbia MO
8	Lincoln
9	San Antonio
10	Dayton

 

crunk  

1	Humble
2	Katy
3	Houston
4	Charlotte
5	Orlando
6	Baton Rouge
7	Farmington
8	Memphis
9	Irving
10	Tampa

 

dance pop  

1	Baltimore
2	Greensboro
3	Detroit
4	Las Vegas
5	Philadelphia
6	Gilbert
7	Pompano Beach
8	Trenton
9	Wilmington DE
10	Atlanta

 

dirty south rap  

1	Humble
2	Katy
3	Houston
4	Charlotte
5	Atlanta
6	Irving
7	Orlando
8	Farmington
9	Memphis
10	Arlington TX

 

duranguense  

1	Mesquite
2	Irving
3	Mountain View
4	Arlington TX
5	Dallas
6	Newark
7	Jersey City
8	Concord
9	Houston
10	Oakland

 

edm  

1	Irvine
2	Hoboken
3	San Jose
4	Fremont
5	Santa Clara
6	Berkeley
7	State College
8	Reno
9	Sunnyvale
10	Bellevue

 

electro house  

1	Hoboken
2	Irvine
3	San Jose
4	Fremont
5	Santa Clara
6	Berkeley
7	New York
8	State College
9	Boston
10	Sunnyvale

 

folk  

1	Nashville
2	Charleston
3	Louisville
4	Raleigh
5	Portland OR
6	Chapel Hill
7	Birmingham
8	Greenville
9	Knoxville
10	Wilmington NC

 

freak folk  

1	Portland OR
2	Brooklyn
3	Seattle
4	Cambridge
5	San Francisco
6	Somerville
7	Santa Monica
8	Athens
9	Austin
10	Denton

 

g funk  

1	Hayward
2	Concord
3	Oakland
4	Sacramento
5	Stockton
6	San Jose
7	Fresno
8	Fremont
9	Los Angeles
10	Whittier

 

hip hop  

1	Hartford
2	Silver Spring
3	Worcester
4	Ann Arbor
5	Farmington
6	Philadelphia
7	Wilmington DE
8	Tampa
9	Boca Raton
10	Hyattsville

 

house  

1	Hoboken
2	Irvine
3	San Jose
4	Fremont
5	Santa Clara
6	Berkeley
7	State College
8	Sunnyvale
9	Reno
10	Orange

 

hurban  

1	Miami
2	Hollywood FL
3	Hialeah
4	Fort Lauderdale
5	Newark
6	West Palm Beach
7	Jersey City
8	The Bronx
9	El Paso
10	Miami Beach

 

hyphy  

1	Concord
2	Hayward
3	Sacramento
4	Stockton
5	Oakland
6	Fresno
7	San Jose
8	Fremont
9	Santa Clara
10	San Francisco

 

indie folk  

1	Portland OR
2	Somerville
3	Cambridge
4	Madison
5	Eugene
6	Spokane
7	Louisville
8	Milwaukee
9	New Haven
10	Durham

 

indie pop  

1	Portland OR
2	Somerville
3	Austin
4	Cambridge
5	Chicago
6	New Orleans
7	Seattle
8	Eugene
9	Lawrence
10	Milwaukee

 

indie rock  

1	Portland OR
2	Chicago
3	Cambridge
4	Somerville
5	Seattle
6	Austin
7	Columbus
8	Tempe
9	San Diego
10	St. Louis

 

indietronica  

1	Santa Monica
2	San Francisco
3	Portland OR
4	Seattle
5	New York
6	San Diego
7	Bellevue
8	Pasadena
9	Anchorage
10	Brooklyn

 

jam band  

1	Boulder
2	Athens
3	Denver
4	Fort Collins
5	Charleston
6	Birmingham
7	Columbia SC
8	Baton Rouge
9	New Orleans
10	Wilmington NC

 

jerk  

1	Stockton
2	Hayward
3	Sacramento
4	Oakland
5	Concord
6	Fremont
7	Corona
8	San Jose
9	Bakersfield
10	Phoenix

 

latin  

1	El Paso
2	Miami
3	Hialeah
4	Miami Beach
5	Hollywood FL
6	Fort Lauderdale
7	Boca Raton
8	West Palm Beach
9	Mesquite
10	Jersey City

 

lo-fi  

1	Portland OR
2	Austin
3	Seattle
4	Cambridge
5	Chicago
6	Somerville
7	Brooklyn
8	Santa Monica
9	Cincinnati
10	Louisville

 

mariachi  

1	Mountain View
2	Newark
3	Mesquite
4	Irving
5	Concord
6	Jersey City
7	Oakland
8	Santa Ana
9	El Paso
10	Dallas

 

norteno  

1	Mountain View
2	Mesquite
3	Irving
4	Newark
5	Concord
6	Oakland
7	Santa Ana
8	Anaheim
9	Bakersfield
10	Houston

 

nu gaze  

1	Portland OR
2	Brooklyn
3	Santa Monica
4	Seattle
5	San Francisco
6	San Diego
7	Pasadena
8	Lawrence
9	New Orleans
10	New York

 

outlaw country  

1	Fort Worth
2	Grand Prairie
3	Frisco
4	College Station
5	Lewisville
6	Lubbock
7	Spring
8	Dallas
9	San Antonio
10	Arlington TX

 

pop  

1	Gilbert
2	Pompano Beach
3	Chandler
4	Trenton
5	Las Vegas
6	Plano
7	Santa Clara
8	Anchorage
9	Vancouver
10	Fresno

 

pop punk  

1	Mesa
2	Virginia Beach
3	Trenton
4	Chandler
5	Buffalo
6	Gilbert
7	Pittsburgh
8	Tucson
9	Colorado Springs
10	East Lansing

 

progressive bluegrass  

1	Denver
2	Boulder
3	Fort Collins
4	Raleigh
5	Charleston
6	Knoxville
7	Chapel Hill
8	Greenville
9	Louisville
10	Nashville

 

r&b  

1	Baltimore
2	Detroit
3	Atlanta
4	Greensboro
5	Memphis
6	Philadelphia
7	Hyattsville
8	Richmond
9	Norfolk
10	Las Vegas

 

r-neg-b  

1	San Francisco
2	Santa Monica
3	New York
4	Brooklyn
5	Providence
6	Seattle
7	Pasadena
8	Portland OR
9	Baltimore
10	Hyattsville

 

ranchera  

1	Mountain View
2	Newark
3	Mesquite
4	Irving
5	Concord
6	Jersey City
7	Oakland
8	Santa Ana
9	Dallas
10	Los Angeles

 

reggaeton  

1	Hialeah
2	Miami
3	Hollywood FL
4	Fort Lauderdale
5	West Palm Beach
6	Orlando
7	Boca Raton
8	Miami Beach
9	Tampa
10	Jersey City

 

shimmer pop  

1	St. Louis
2	Santa Monica
3	Lawrence
4	San Francisco
5	Kansas City
6	Overland Park
7	Littleton
8	Colorado Springs
9	Aurora
10	Bellevue

 

stomp and holler  

1	Portland OR
2	Somerville
3	Louisville
4	Minneapolis
5	Wilmington NC
6	Cambridge
7	Eugene
8	Madison
9	Milwaukee
10	Spokane

 

synthpop  

1	San Francisco
2	Santa Monica
3	New York
4	Tucson
5	Pasadena
6	San Diego
7	Tempe
8	Bellevue
9	Chicago
10	Gainesville

 

trap music  

1	Charlotte
2	Memphis
3	Humble
4	Richmond
5	Farmington
6	Silver Spring
7	Orlando
8	Toledo
9	Baton Rouge
10	Katy

 

west coast rap  

1	Hayward
2	Concord
3	Sacramento
4	Oakland
5	Stockton
6	San Jose
7	Fresno
8	Fremont
9	Los Angeles
10	Whittier

 

worship  

1	Springfield MO
2	Grand Rapids
3	Spokane
4	Tulsa
5	Birmingham
6	St. Paul
7	Oklahoma City
8	Greenville
9	Knoxville
10	Murfreesboro

 
 

This might also be the preface for a volume of sociology essays.