Girlhood, mortality hacks and a theory of "Sound Towns"

I owe it all to the readers who sent in their Spotify Wrapped results

God bless the people at Spotify who dream up a new schtick for Wrapped every year, the better to engineer wall-to-wall virality and consolidate their hold on the worlds’ collective ears. In 2022, it was those “audio days” — a breakdown of the genres you listen to at different times. This year, they gave us the Spotify “sound town” — an assigned city or metro area that likes the same music that you like.  

Spotify has been vague about how it made these geographic matches. The methodology, they say, relied on “a user’s most-streamed artists of the year, and the way in which those artists are streamed in other cities.” This is kiiiind of fascinating, when you think about it, because it suggests that cities have meaningfully individualized listening patterns — distinct even from other, nearby cities, or more distant places with similar cultures. 

Put differently, you’d expect music tastes to differ between Cuiabá, Brazil and Jakarta, Indonesia, two of the cities that Spotify lists among its most popular. Even the tyranny of TikTok hits and FM radio can’t hop all those linguistic and cultural barriers. 

But the inclusion of much more similar cities in much more similar places — I’m thinking here of Bozeman and Missoula, Montana — suggests that music taste varies on a FAR more local level. But, like — how local, exactly? And according to which factors? 

“Sound towns” as shorthand

Fortunately for me and any other curious nerds in the audience, a team of researchers tackled this very question in a 2018 study for the Journal of Cultural Economics. In it, they analyzed the music preferences of 120,000 people, mapping five “categories” of music to 95 specific metro areas. 

Below, at left and in dark gray, are the cities most associated with “unpretentious” music — the researchers’ umbrella term for pop, religious and country. On the right are the cities linked to “contemporary” music, or rap, soul, funk and reggae:

Metro areas most associated with “unpretentious” music, like pop and country (left) and “contemporary” music, like rap and reggae (right). (Journal of Culture Economics)

These cities aren’t where you’d expect, musically or historically speaking. Neither Atlanta nor New York City make the top 10 metros for rap, and Nashville doesn’t rank among the top cities for country. 

Instead, these researchers found, music preferences at the city level seem to correlate with broader demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, like race, education, politics, income levels, marriage rates and religiosity. Each city contains a unique mix of residents — and thus each city listens to music differently. 

The study found, for instance, that a city’s preference for “unpretentious” music (country, pop, religious) is correlated with religion. Cities that like country and pop also tend to be more working-class and Republican. 

Meanwhile, a preference for “sophisticated” music — jazz and classical, among other genres — correlates pretty closely with a larger share of residents in creative industries and higher education levels. Cities that over-index on sophisticated music also tend to be a bit less white, and a bit more gas, than the average metro area. 

In other words, we can say that San Francisco listens to lots of jazz … but by “San Francisco,” we mean educated, creative people, many of whom are not white or straight. “San Francisco” is essentially shorthand for a larger collection of demographic traits. 

Your Spotify Wrapped is ‘college grad’

I’m honestly not sure how applicable these insights are to Spotify Wrapped, in large part because Spotify has said so little about the methodology behind the project. But dozens of you sent me your “sound towns” last week, and that revealed a pattern that feels pretty relevant:

With very few exceptions, Links readers got matched to college towns — like Provo, Ithaca and my personal sound town, Madison.

At first, I thought the college town connection must relate in some way to the listening habits of college students. Like, maybe students exist on some cutting cultural edge or maybe Spotify has more data for those places because young people listen to more music.

But then I realized something a bit more mundane: People in college towns are more educated than the population as a whole. Links readers also, I suspect, tend to have college degrees — so the apparent preponderance of college towns in Spotify’s results may actually just reflect the demographics of Links. 

This might be true for larger audiences, too, although obviously I’m just spitballing here. A billion media outlets, and at least a few city tourism directors, have celebrated the apparent Spotify triumph of Berkeley, Cambridge and Burlington. One popular internet theory holds that queer people were most likely to get those assignments — which comes down to demographics, once again!

But I also wonder if there isn’t some overlap between the type of person who lives in Berkeley, Cambridge or Burlington and the type of person who shares their Spotify Wrapped. Across most platforms, young people, college graduates and high-earners tend to use social media in higher numbers than people who are older, less wealthy and less educated. And when you look at the latest census data for those buzzy sound towns…

Yellow shading indicates a figure around the national average; red shading indicates that figure is higher. The metro areas containing Cambridge, Burlington and Berkeley are markedly wealthier and more educated than most metros in America.

Spotify itself has said that just 0.6% of its listeners got Burlington, 0.3% got Berkeley, and 0.1% got Cambridge. The single most popular sound town was actually San Luis Obispo, Calif. — but I haven’t seen many people posting about that.

San Luis Obispo, I think it’s worth noting, sits intriguingly close to the median age, income and education level for American metro areas. 

(And if you’d like to look up the demographics of *your* sound town, I did in fact waste an hour of my day making a searchable public spreadsheet with more data.)

---

---

If you read anything else this weekend

“Move Over, Lads! How the World Turned Girly,” by Jess Cartner-Morley for The Guardian. Much has been written about girlhood this year, in all its glorious strains, but I think this piece might represent the best unified theory for what girliness is and why it’s trending. Cartner-Morley takes a broad view: from Barbie, The Eras Tour and hot girl summer to Gilmore Girls, The Golden Girls and all those girl-titled thrillers that clogged airport bookstores in the mid-2010s. Girlhood represents an alternative “to the tradition of the ‘marriage plot,’” she writes — it’s a lifestyle choice, and a whole-ass vibe, based in fun, community and independence.

“How to Waste Time,” by Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost for The Atlantic. I rarely share podcast episodes, let alone their transcripts, but this has measurably changed how I live my daily life — so I’m making a justified exception! In this conversation about time, attention and productivity, Rashid and Bogost argue that time management hacks are basically attempts to deny our mortality: We have too little time, we can’t deal with that … ergo, Pomodoro methods and multitasking! This resonated with me so strongly that I actually revised my work schedule for the next month to reflect my new acceptance that I can’t do it all. Reader, it is FREEING. I have reached enlightenment. I’m sure I’ll still overdo it on Christmas preparations.

“Who Is @BasedBeffJezos, The Leader Of The Tech Elite’s ‘E/Acc’ Movement?” by Emily Baker-White for Forbes. I don’t want to read about the latest Silicon Valley brain disease; neither, I know, do you. But in the interests of gaining just a working understanding of the quasi-philosophical movements guiding tech right now, I recommended this fantastically side-eyed profile of the Twitter character advocating for unchecked “innovation” via his “hypercognitive biohack” slash “meta-religion.”

“Was Bobi the World’s Oldest Dog—or a Fraud?,” by Matt Reynolds for Wired UK. In the interests of managing expectations, you should know this going in: Reynolds does not definitively determine whether the 31-year-old Portuguese mastiff who holds the Guinness record for world’s oldest dog … actually is. But the journey through several internet conspiracies, and the interviews with several Serious Veterinary Experts, are well-worth the squeeze on their own.

👉 ICYMI: The most-clicked link from last week’s newsletter was the amazing, semi-fictional (?) short story “The Hofmann Wobble.”

---

---

Postscripts

The weird, secretive world of potato chip flavors. The other school censorship crisis. “According to those who are active in the world of kink, an appetite for this type of political role-play grew during the Trump administration.” How the economics of podcasting changed. How ChatGPT changed tech forever. Pity the writers of horny copypasta in this frantic news cycle.

A project that would’ve pushed the boundaries of theater foundered on the rocks of reality. That lawyers can screen animations for jurors is frankly insane to me. AI humanity. Use rizz in a sentence. “The quantified clit.” Last but not least: the lowly smartphone as metaphor for economic disgruntlement.

That’s it for this week! Until the next one. Warmest virtual regards.

— Caitlin