YouTube has become a dominant force in the music industry in the last few years, particularly among younger people. With the help of YouTube’s geocoded streaming data, we set out to map the contours of music fandom and culture in the United States.
Of the artists on the Billboard Top 100 this spring, we looked at the 50 that were most watched on YouTube in the United States between January 2016 and April 2017. Each map shows relative popularity in different parts of the country. If one part of a map is lighter, it doesn’t mean people there weren’t watching the artist’s videos; it just means fans were more likely to listen to a variety of other artists.
See the complete set of fan maps below, listed in order of YouTube views in our data. (You can use your left or right arrow key to cycle through the maps.)
Interested in some music to go with your map browsing? Enter a U.S. location in the search box to get a custom playlist based on that area’s favorite artists among those in our data, or skip straight to the maps.
1. Future
In March, the prolific Atlanta rapper Future became the first artist to replace himself at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart with back-to-back releases. At the time, Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times, spoke of the rising dominance of Atlanta in hip-hop.
2. Rihanna
Rihanna burst to prominence over a decade ago with “Pon de Replay,” a pop-dancehall single that peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She shows strong regional differences in her appeal: She’s most popular along the East Coast and especially in the South.
Go here to read all 50 Maps – or the Map on your favorite star…
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/upshot/music-fandom-maps.html?_r=0&utm_source=Denverite&utm_campaign=020a049ee1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dd2c9a8936-020a049ee1-139092257#future
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]