Comfortable Spotify Wrapped Day! It’s that point of yr once more the place half of your social media feed is clogged with graphics from Spotify’s annual, customized roundup, and the opposite half is folks whining that they don’t care about your Spotify Wrapped.
Spotify Wrapped reveals listeners their most-played songs and artists, together with different enjoyable surprises. This yr, the roundup added a brand new characteristic known as “Sound Town,” which matches customers to a metropolis the place residents share their music style. For followers of sure folky indie rock artists, Burlington, Vermont was weirdly widespread, particularly for the reason that city solely has a inhabitants of about 44,000. Weirdly widespread sufficient that individuals on Reddit and X are speaking about why we’ve all been assigned Vermonter by Spotify…. weirdly widespread sufficient that a number of folks have joked that Burlington’s tourism board paid off Spotify and, sure, weirdly widespread sufficient that I made a spreadsheet and collected data concerning the listening habits of people that share the music tastes of Burlington.
From 20 assigned-Burlingtonians who shared their listening knowledge with me, sure bands like boygenius and Massive Thief have been disproportionately widespread — this contains the 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’ve significantly massive fan bases amongst queer girls.
The Grammy-nominated artists Massive Thief and boygenius is probably not family names (but), however they’re widespread sufficient to have some sway in Spotify’s knowledge. Massive Thief has 2.8 million month-to-month Spotify listeners; boygenius has 4.4 million. This affect is probably going compounded in Spotify’s dataset, since somebody who listens to boygenius additionally most likely listens to Phoebe Bridgers (10.5 million month-to-month listeners), who additionally listens to Lucy Dacus (1.7 million), and so forth.
The cultural relevance of boygenius amongst younger queer folks can’t be overstated, and evidently, it’s sufficient to kind a pattern in Spotify Wrapped knowledge. In a profile for Them known as “The Infinite Gay Joy of Boygenius,” Lex McMenamin defines the pull that bands like boygenius have for queer followers: “[boygenius’ recent album] asks important questions about faith, death, trust, and relationships, but for once, they come from minds that believe that women and trans and queer people and people of color are people, that people deserve basic income and a job and a home, that we should be allowed to live. Rock music as a whole can’t even achieve that standard in 2023.”
Per Spotify Wrapped, folks in Burlington are additionally extra prone to be followers of Ethel Cain, HAIM, Palehound, Samia, Radiator Hospital, Indigo De Souza, Rilo Kiley, Automotive Seat Headrest and different acts in comparable genres, a number of of whom are queer.
Per the Burlington mayor in town’s official web site, Burlingtonians are typically “diverse and forward-thinking” and “steeped in arts and culture.” A buddy who lives in Burlington (and who additionally obtained Burlington on their Wrapped) put it extra bluntly: “tbh we have a lot of sad gay college students with wide varieties of music tastes,” they instructed me on Discord. After I posted on X that I used to be wanting into what’s up with Burlington and boygenius, one other individual responded: “this is because Burlington is the lesbian capital of the US. hope this helps <3”
Individuals with adjoining music style additionally discovered themselves pegged to locations like Cambridge, Massachusetts and Berkeley, California. In a submit with 33,000 likes, @brokebackstan wrote, “spotify is trying to make a gay commune in berkeley, a lesbian commune in burlington, and a bisexual commune in cambridge.” One other user, @worms5brain wrote, “Why has every gay person got burlington usa as their wrapped location.” Author Abby Monteil wrote, “does she…you know…have spotify listening habits in common with berkeley, burlington, or cambridge?”
Spotify stated in a press release to TechCrunch, “Sound Town was created to show users how their listening habits are shared by communities everywhere. The Sound Town selected for each eligible user has the most similar taste profile to their own – based on their most streamed artists of the year and how those artists are streamed in other cities across the globe. It is objective and entirely driven by a user’s listening history.”
Nearly 0.6% of followers will get Burlington as their Sound City, out of 1,300 potential places. Nonetheless, that’s about 7.8 instances increased than the common could be if there have been a good distribution of customers amongst every of the 1,300 locations (0.07%).
Even Spotify’s X account acknowledged the anomaly:
What makes the Burlington state of affairs stranger, although, is that some folks assigned the city had a totally totally different music style, preferring “dad rock” bands like Steely Dan and Grateful Useless. Truthful sufficient — Burlington isn’t a monolith. However the knowledge will get even additional skewed by the last word wild card, a lady whose powers are nice sufficient to utterly mess up anybody’s Spotify Wrapped: Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift is the most-streamed artist throughout all of Spotify, with 107.7 million month-to-month listeners. That’s about 2,447 Burlingtons. Naturally, she seems on this subset of pseudo Burlington resident Spotify listeners, as a result of she is in every single place and unavoidable in a approach that’s as fascinating as it’s terrifying. Out of the 20 folks’s knowledge that I’ve, Taylor Swift seems in listeners’ High 5 artists eight instances. Then once more, that is probably true of different Sound Cities, since nobody is resistant to Taylor. Not even the NFL.
One other issue is the rising folk star Noah Kahan, with 24.9 million month-to-month listeners, who’s from Strafford, Vermont, inhabitants 1,094. Strafford is about an hour and a half away from Burlington by automotive, however hometown pleasure for the singer-songwriter radiates throughout the Inexperienced Mountain State. Kahan’s 2023 album “Stick Season” shot him to the highest of the Billboard charts, however his collaborations with artists like Hozier (additionally a favourite in Burlington) and Put up Malone helped expose him to a wider viewers. So, Kahan followers have been discovering themselves getting assigned Burlington as nicely.
To this point, these artists haven’t acknowledged their probably newfound relationship with Burlington, Vermont. However possibly on their subsequent tour, boygenius will cease in Burlington, if there’s even a venue sufficiently big to deal with them.
