Have you ever wondered where the artists you listen to come from?
Or if there are any good bands from Kazakhstan?
There is a tool that takes all the music you listen to, and it checks the country of every artist. All you need to do is visit Explr.fm (mold.github.io/explr) and type in your last.fm username, and it generates this super-cool map.
You can export the data out to a spreadsheet to see your stats per country. Here are my top ten countries:
| Country | Number of artists | Scrobbles |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 3688 | 38325 |
| United Kingdom | 1363 | 10542 |
| Germany | 487 | 4783 |
| France | 419 | 5180 |
| Canada | 309 | 2238 |
| Sweden | 256 | 2245 |
| Australia | 220 | 2777 |
| Italy | 173 | 1068 |
| Netherlands | 159 | 998 |
| Japan | 129 | 659 |
Of course, America and the United Kingdom will be at the top for me. But huh, Germany is third. Ok.
Maps are pretty, and charts are fun, but what can you really do with this information?
You can check out the countries where you haven’t listened to any music, and give them a try.
Of the 209 countries, I have listened to music from 125 countries. Thus, I am missing 84 countries. For example, I haven’t ever listened to any artists from Zimbabwe, Greenland, and Kazakhstan.
Explr will give you a list of five artists from each country to try. Explr will also give you a Spotify playlist for that country. (Although, not all the countries will have a recommended Spotify playlist.)
I plan on going through all 125 countries and trying to find at least one song that I like.
Zimbabwe
- “Donhodzo” by Jah Prayzah (mbira, zimdancehall)
Greenland
- “Song in a Myth” by Inuït (inuit traditional)
Kazakhstan really pulled in some songs.
- “Úide” by Darkhan Juzz (central asian hip hop, kazakh hip hop, kazakh indie, kazakh pop)
- “OI” by Darkhan Juzz (central asian hip hop, kazakh hip hop, kazakh indie, kazakh pop)
- “Ритм-такт” by Qanay, Kalifarniya (kazakh pop)
- “Tus Eken” by Marhaba Sabi (kazakh indie, kazakh pop)
- “Ayga dein” by Ayree (kazakh pop)
- “Queen” by Ziruza (kazakh pop, q-pop)
The genres in the parenthesis are Spotify sub-genres. I found those by looking up the songs in chosic.com. Instead of looking up the songs one by one, save some time and add your songs to a Spotify playlist.
I saved all these songs by adding them to my “Discovered 2024” playlist. Anytime I come across a song I like, I add it to this playlist. (I have a playlist for every year since 2009). By having these songs in a playlist, I can run a playlist analyzer on all the songs with chosic.com. That’s how I found the sub-genres for each song in my list above.
If you see a particular sub-genre popping up in your saved songs, congratulations! You just found a new subgenre you enjoy. It’s fun discovering subgenres you like that you never knew existed. For instance, I like some Kazakh Pop. I’ll keep this in mind if I ever do my radio show covering all 6,000 music genres.
What new genres from across the world will you discover?