By Steven Zeisler
What happens when a map of the United States is used to list songs that represent a specific state or city? You get Geotunes, a Spotify app that allows you to “locate and listen to songs written about cities, landmarks, events and more by using a giant, interactive map as your musical playground,” according to their website.
KUSC Interactive, a department of Classical KUSC, created the Geotunes app. Classical KUSC is actually one of the largest and most listened to non-profit public radio classical music stations in the country. Based in Los Angeles, KUSC Interactive is “dedicated to producing innovative platforms for dialogue and discovery in the global arts community,” according to their website.
At first glance, the user interface of the app is simple and clean. At the top of the app are options for Map View and Featured Tracks. The Map View takes you to the interactive map of the United States where all of the magic happens. As you track your cursor across the map, states and cities become highlighted, allowing you to select to see what is the most popular music about that specific area. You can also zoom in and out of the map using five different zoom lengths.
When a certain state or city is selected, a list is pops up with the most “popular” (as according to music about that area that can be organized by popularity or alphabetical order. For example, when I selected my home state of Ohio, the most popular three tracks were:
1) Ohio is for Lovers by Hawthorne Heights
2) Look at Miss Ohio by Miranda Lambert
3) Ohio by Justice
In case you were wondering, New York City’s most popular three tracks were:
1) Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down by Alicia Keys
2) Hey There Delilah by Plain White T’s
3) A-Punk by Vampire Weekend
In the top left-hand corner, there is also a category search, with random topics ranging from “poetic places” to “surburbia” to even “assassinations.” When I clicked on “bridges,” I noticed that three song titles popped up over the map itself (see image below). When this happens, the app allows you to quick select that album image right away to start playing the song. There will even be some quick facts about that specific artist that populate at the bottom of the app.
The Featured Tracks allow you to search for top songs by the same specific themes on the Map View screen. For a list of all of the themes, refer to the image below:
Usually each theme contains three or four of the most popular songs associated with that theme. Each song comes provided with a description or interesting quip about that particular artist, and at any time you can click on the artist or track title and it takes you right to their Spotify page. Very fluid.
While I like the Geotunes app and the relationship it provides with music, history, and geography, I hope to see it improve its overall list of smaller cities. I think it would also be incredible if they could somehow integrate and provide live data for the most popular music that people are listening to at any given moment in a certain geographic location.
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