Right now, you’re likely listening to music perfectly in-sync with another person in some other corner of the globe. But who are they? Now, you can find out where they live, at least. A new feature from music-streaming service Spotify displays an online map that shows when people in different cities hit play on the same song at the same time.
The interactive map spins every three seconds to show where listeners located in different sectors of the globe have started playing the same song within a tenth of a second of each other. The map shows that music aficionados are simultaneously listening to everything from top 40 hits like “Lay Me Down” by Sam Smith and “Problem” by Ariana Grande to indie-jams like “Feels Like We Only Go Backward” by Tame Impala and “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance.
Kyle McDonald, Spotify's first media artist-in-residence, created this mesmerizing display of real-time data. "We're also connected in more ephemeral ways, and we can extract these relationships with new tools," McDonald wrote on Spotify's blog. "Even though listening to music can be a very private experience, I wanted to see how often this experience is shared."
