People in the Deep South love Future and Beyonce. Like, they looove Future and Beyonce. Folks in Utah like Twenty One Pilots. Those in California, Washington and South Dakota dig The Weeknd.
File this under "stuff you don't need to know." And yet, you'll fall hard into The New York Times' heat maps of where artists' most avid fans live. It's a lot of fun, even if you can't figure out what you're supposed to be learning.
The NYT's Josh Katz took the Billboard Top 100's list from spring 2017 and combined it with the 50 artists Americans watched most on YouTube from January 2016 through April 2017. It's a popularity map, basically, and deep purple means deep love.
If you're like me, you'll scroll through the main maps, looking for purple over Dallas-Fort Worth.
Keep scrolling.
Yup, keep going.
OK, some folks have watched a lot of YouTube videos of the No. 13 artist, Drake. We're also into Post Malone, No. 29, which makes sense: He's from Grapevine. We seem to love Gucci Mane, No. 33. And of course, hometown gal Selena Gomez, No. 39. And Lil Yachty, No. 48.
Go back near the top and type in your zip code to see what the New York Times' data says you should like -- or at the least, which musicians your fellow Dallasites have watched regularly on YouTube. It'll serve Dallas zip codes a YouTube playlist of songs such as Gucci Mane's "Both," Drake's "Hotline Bling,"and Metallica's "Hardwired."
A colleague in Frisco tried it and got Coldplay and Shakira songs, which is for some reason hilarious. Someone in Fort Worth got "Can't Stop the Feeling," featuring the cast of Trolls. Which is also hilarious.
Do we collectively love those songs? Maybe not. But it's a fun, free playlist.
h/t Axios
