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HappySpotify WrappedDay ! It ’s that prison term of year again where half of your social media feed is clogged with nontextual matter from Spotify ’s one-year , individualised roundup , and the other one-half is multitude whining that they do n’t care about your Spotify Wrapped .
Spotify wrap shows listeners their most - act as song and artist , along with other playfulness surprise . This year , the roundup contribute a young feature called “ Sound Town , ” which matches users to a city where residents partake their music gustatory sensation . For fans of sure folky indie rock creative person , Burlington , Vermont was weirdly popular , specially since the town only has a population of about44,000 . Weirdly democratic enough that people on Reddit and X are spill the beans about why we ’ve all been assign Vermonter by Spotify … . weirdly democratic enough that several people have joke that Burlington ’s tourism plank paid off Spotify and , yes , weirdly democratic enough that Imade a spreadsheet and collected dataabout the hearing habit of people who share the medicine taste of Burlington .
https://twitter.com/triedndtrueblue/status/1729853946527645939
From 20 assigned - Burlingtonians who shared their listening data point with me , certain band like boygenius and Big Thief were disproportionately democratic — this includes the piece of work of the solo artists who make up these two bands : Phoebe Bridgers , Lucy Dacus , Julien Baker and Adrienne Lenker , all of whom are queer , and who have particularly large rooter bases among queer woman .
The Grammy - nominated creative person Big Thief and boygenius may not be home names ( yet ) , but they ’re popular enough to have some sway in Spotify ’s data . Big Thief has 2.8 million monthly Spotify auditor ; boygenius has 4.4 million . This influence is in all probability compounded in Spotify ’s dataset , since someone who listens to boygenius also probably listens to Phoebe Bridgers ( 10.5 million monthly attender ) , who also listens to Lucy Dacus ( 1.7 million ) , and so on .
The cultural relevancy of boygenius among young queen masses can not be overstated , and evidently , it ’s enough to form a trend in Spotify Wrapped data . In a profile for Them called “ The Infinite Gay Joy of Boygenius , ” Lex McMenamin delimitate the pull that set like boygenius have for fag buff : “ [ boygenius ’ late album ] enquire important questions about faith , death , trust , and kinship , but for once , they come from mind that think that char and trans and queer people and people of color are the great unwashed , that citizenry deserve basic income and a task and a home , that we should be allowed to populate . Rock music as a whole ca n’t even achieve that touchstone in 2023 . ”
Per Spotify Wrapped , people in Burlington are also more probable to be fans of Ethel Cain , HAIM , Palehound , Samia , Radiator Hospital , Indigo De Souza , Rilo Kiley , Car rump Headrest and other acts in exchangeable genres , several of whom are queer .
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burlington usa harmonise to spotify wrappedpic.twitter.com/b2AESPzV6s
— meg successiveness textual matter posts ( @successtextpost)November 29 , 2023
Per the Burlingtonmayoron the town ’s prescribed site , Burlingtonians lean to be “ diverse and frontward - thinking ” and “ immerse in arts and culture . ” A Quaker who lives in Burlington ( and who also got Burlington on their Wrapped ) put it more bluntly : “ tbh we have a lot of sad gay college students with across-the-board varieties of euphony smack , ” they told me on Discord . When I post on X that I was seem into what ’s up with Burlington and boygenius , another personresponded : “ this is because Burlington is the lesbian capital of the US . go for this helps <3 ”
hoi polloi with adjacent medicine taste also discover themselves pegged to place like Cambridge , Massachusetts and Berkeley , California . In a post with 33,000 likes , @brokebackstanwrote , “ spotify is taste to make a homosexual commune in berkeley , a lesbian commune in burlington , and a epicene commune in Cambridge University . ” Anotheruser , @worms5brain wrote , “ Why has every gay person got burlington usa as their envelop location . ” Writer Abby Monteilwrote , “ does she … you know … have spotify hearing substance abuse in common with berkeley , burlington , or cambridge ? ”
So this yr it ’s actually just Burlington , Vermonthttps://t.co/bk1BgJqubE
— Grant Sharples ( @grantsharpies)November 29 , 2023
Spotify pronounce in a statement to TechCrunch , “ Sound Town was created to show users how their hearing habits are divvy up by community everywhere . The Sound Town selected for each eligible user has the most standardized taste visibility to their own – base on their most streamed artists of the year and how those artists are stream in other cities across the globe . It is objective and entirely driven by a drug user ’s hearing story . ”
Just about 0.6 % of fans will get Burlington as their Sound Town , out of 1,300 possible locations . Still , that ’s about 7.8 time higher than the average would be if there were an even distribution of drug user among each of the 1,300 places ( 0.07 % ) .
Even Spotify ’s cristal account acknowledge the anomaly :
hey besties@CityofBerkeley@Burlington_VT@CambMA 💚
— Spotify ( @Spotify)November 29 , 2023
What makes the Burlington post stranger , though , is that some people arrogate the town had a whole different medicine taste , preferring “ dad rock ” bands like Steely Dan and Grateful Dead . Fair enough — Burlington is not a monolith . But the data gets even further skewed by the ultimate dotty batting order , a woman whose powers are large enough to all mess up anyone ’s Spotify wrap : Taylor Swift .
Taylor Swift is themost - streamedartist across all of Spotify , with 107.7 million monthly listeners . That ’s about 2,447 Burlington . Naturally , she appears in this subset of faker Burlington resident Spotify attender , because she is everywhere and unavoidable in a way that is as fascinating as it is terrifying . Out of the 20 people ’s datum that I have , Taylor Swift appears in listeners ’ Top 5 artists eight times . Then again , this is likely true of other Sound town , since no one is resistant to Taylor . Not eventhe NFL .
Another element is therising folk starNoah Kahan , with 24.9 million monthly listeners , who is from Strafford , Vermont , population 1,094 . Strafford is about an time of day and a one-half aside from Burlington by car , but hometown superbia for the vocalist - songwriter radiates across the Green Mountain State . Kahan ’s 2023 album “ Stick Season ” shot him to the top of theBillboardcharts , but his collaborationism with artists like Hozier ( also a favourite in Burlington ) and Post Malone serve expose him to a wider consultation . So , Kahan fan have been get themselves getting assigned Burlington as well .
So far , these artists have n’t acknowledged their potentially newfound relationship with Burlington , Vermont . But maybe on their next go , boygenius will stop in Burlington , if there ’s even a venue gravid enough to do by them .
Spotify Wrapped 2023 bring an AI DJ and Blend to the yearly personalize insights
