Some Musical Maps in Motion

Elevation Music

Everybody hates elevator music but everyone will love Elevation Music.

Elevation Music is an interactive map in which the elevation data is styled based on the intensity of an accompanying music track. It is a dancing map!

If you want to know how Elevation Music works the author's blog post explains: 

'This demo uses Mapbox GL JS raster-color-value and other raster-* paint properties to alter the colors on the map by elevation, based on the intensity of the music. Turn sound on and click the play button to start the experience.'

The blog post also reveals that the song used by the map is actually called 'Elevation'.

Ohio is a Piano

Inside every cartographer, there’s a musician trying to get out - or at least it seems that way, judging by the number of musical maps.

Take, for example, the ever-popular Ohio is a Piano. Andy Woodruff’s map turns Ohio’s 88 counties into the 88 keys of a piano, meaning you can literally play the map like an instrument. You can even listen to it perform a version of Scott Joplin’s The Entertainer.

MTA.me

Transit maps can be instruments too. For example MTA.me Conductor transforms Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York subway map into a real-time string instrument. It visualizes subway trains moving across the network - and plays a note every time one train crosses paths with another.

Fire up the map and just sit back as a New York subway symphony is composed and performed in real time. You can even join the composition by plucking the trails created by individual trains.

Sing to Me

Mapbox's Animate 3D buildings based on ambient sounds is another dancing map - but this time, it’s the buildings that groove. Instead of elevation data being influenced by music, this map makes 3D buildings respond to sound.

According to Mapbox:

"It uses runtime styling with the Web Audio API to create a map where the 3D buildings dynamically change height to the rhythm of your ambient environment, giving the appearance of dancing."

In layman’s terms? The buildings on this map will dance when you sing to them!

The A-Z Music Map

Step into the heart of Swinging London and let its iconic music lead you through the streets of a city alive with creativity, rebellion, and freedom. The 'London A to Z 1962-1973' interactive map will take you on a sonic journey through the London locations that helped shape one of the most exciting periods in music history.

LONDON A to Z 1962-1973 is an interactive map of songs about London from the Swinging 60s. During the 60s, London was at the heart of a global cultural revolution. As a symbol of youthful energy and creativity, the city represented freedom and opportunity. Many artists were drawn to this vibrant atmosphere and naturally incorporated London’s spirit into their music. Now, you can experience that creative energy for yourself by exploring the tracks on the London A to Z map.

All the songs featured on the map come from a new compilation album published by Ace Records, titled Bob Stanley Presents: London A to Z (1962-1973). The album includes tracks from artists such as Nick Drake, Cat Stevens, Jethro Tull, and Marianne Faithfull (though it seems Ace Records couldn't secure the rights to Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks!). As the title suggests, all the songs on the album reference a location or landmark in London. 

Each song on the album is represented on the London A to Z map by a pin. When you click on a marker, you can listen to a 30-second excerpt from the song. If you enjoy the selections, you can purchase the full album from Ace Records. For me, discovering a Nick Drake song I’d never heard before was like finding a hidden treasure. What might you find with the new musical London A to Z?

The AI Music Map

Over the last few days my Twitter feed has been lit up by people sharing the songs that they have created on Udio. For the one or two cave dwellers out there who have only just installed spelunking wi-fi, Udio is an AI-powered music generation tool which allows users to create songs from a text prompt. The tool allows you to create tunes with customized lyrics, vocal styles, and musical genres.

Because I happen to follow a lot of cartographers and geographers many of the AI songs I have seen on Twitter have a map theme. However Darren Wiens has to get a special mention for creating the first Udio-map mash-up. His Longitunes interactive globe allows you to click on lines of longitude around the world to listen to an AI-generated song about that specific pole-to-pole segment of the Earth.

Of course using music as a navigational aide isn't new. Long before maps and compasses were invented the indigenous people of Australia were able to navigate using the songlines of the Gods. Songlines, or dreaming tracks, are the creation myths of Indigenous Australians. They are the paths that the creator-beings took across the world while naming and creating the features of the land. 

These songlines crisscross Australia and, if you know the songline, you can follow the routes that the creator-beings took across the country. By singing the songlines indigenous people can actually navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior. You can learn more about songlines from different parts of Australia on ABC's Singing the Country into Life, which explores the songlines of a number of indigenous groups across the whole of Australia.

The Most Popular Music in Your Town

SZA's Kill Bill was the most listened to song in New York and San Francisco this year. In Denver and New Orleans the most listened to song was Morgan Wallen's Last Night. While Eslabon Armado y Peso Pluma's Ella Baila Sola was the most popular tune in Los Angeles, Houston and San Diego.

Spotify has released a new interactive map which reveals the most listened to songs in cities around the world. Wrapped Mapped has been released by Spotify as part of its annual data round-up of what music people have been listening to in the past year.

Every December Spotify provides all its users with a personalized summary of their listening habits over the previous year. This 'Wrapped' summary provides a fun and engaging way for Spotify users to see which artists, songs and genres they have been listening to, as well as how many minutes they have actually spent listening to music during the year. Wrapped is typically released in early December, and users can share their Wrapped results with friends and social media.

This year's Wrapped includes an interactive map which reveals the local streaming trends during 2023 in locations across the world. Click on a city on the Wrapped Mapped interactive globe and you can view a top 5 list of the songs which were most streamed in that city over the past 12 months. If you have a Spotify account you can even click on the links to listen to each of the listed songs.

The Folk Music of the World

Carnegie Hall's Musical Explorers Around the World Map allows you to discover and listen to folk music from all corners of the globe. Using the map you can directly listen to bluegrass music from Appalachia, mbira music from Zimbabwe, calypso from Trinidad & Tabago, and lots of other amazing performances of traditional music in countries around the world.

If you click on a marker on the Musical Explorers Around the World Map you can listen to a sound recording of a folk song from that part of the world. You can also watch a video recorded by the musician, in which they introduce themselves and the music that they sing and play. You will also find links to lesson plans related to the selected music tradition. 

As well as being an interacgtive map Carnegie Hall's Musical Explorers Around the World is also a free curriculum designed to connect students in grades K–2 to rich and diverse musical communities around the world. The lessons in the curriculum introduce students to the music traditions of many different cultures while building and reinforcing fundamental music skills, such as listening, singing, and moving to music. 

Each unit includes a variety of resources for teachers and students, including: lesson plans, actual music recordings of the songs, sheet music, activity sheets and other supplemental materials.The program also culminates in an interactive concert experience, during which students celebrate what they've learned by singing and dancing along with their new favorite artists.

Also See

The Global Jukebox - interactive map of folk music recorded around the world from the Alan Lomax Collection 

The Map of Female Composers

How many female composers can you name? I'm guessing that you can't name many. 

For example, have you heard of Clara Josephine Schumann? Clara Schumann was one of the most distinguished pianists of the 19th century. She was also a prolific composer. If you haven't heard of Clara then you might have heard of her husband Robert Schumann. 

If you haven't heard of Clara then you probably also haven't heard of Maria Anna Mozart. As a child in the 18th Century Maria toured Europe playing the harpsichord. Maria usually had top-billing, but was often accompanied by her younger brother Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Unfortunately Maria's parents forced her to stop playing when she was 15 and these days her memory is largely eclipsed by that of her brother.

Spanish music teacher Sakira Ventura can help you discover many more accomplished female composers. Her Creators of the History of Music interactive map features more than 500 female composers from around the world. If you click on the picture of a composer on the map you can read a short biography and click through to their Wikipedia page and to examples of their music (where available). The map also features a Spotify playlist compiled by Sakira which features music from many of the composers featured on the interactive map.

The 3D Glastonbury Festival Map

This weekend thousands of people should be enjoying five days of music and contemporary performing arts at the Glastonbury Festival. Unfortunately for the second year running the festival has had to be cancelled. If you are missing the festival experience this weekend then you can console yourself by visiting the V&A museum's 3D Glastonbury map.

Mapping Glastonbury is an interactive 3D map made by the Victoria and Albert Museum for its Glastonbury Weekender exhibition. The map uses the real topography of Worthy Farm to create an immersive 3D experience, which allows you to explore how the festival has grown over the decades and get a small taste of the Glastonbury experience. 

Mapping Glastonbury includes a timeline which allows you to view 3D maps of the festival site for each decade from the 1970s to the 2010s. This allows you to visualize how the festival has grown from a relatively small event attended by 1,500 people to the huge festival site of the present, which is normally attended by around 175,000 people.

If you double-click on the 3D map you can zoom in and explore the different areas of the festival site, including the Pyramid Stage, the Green fields and the Unfairground. You can also click on the floating nodes on the map to access photographs, soundscapes and videos of the festival from the V&A's own Glastonbury Festival Archive.

Mapping Our Music Bubbles

The Pudding has used data from from YouTube to visualize what people are most listening to around the world. What is very cool about The Pudding's Music Bubble interactive visualization is that it uses your location to present a localized visualization of the music people near you are listening to, before moving out to reveal the music which is popular elsewhere around the world.

The Pudding's new Music Bubble map starts by looking at the music which is most popular in your own city. As you progress through the Music Bubble the map starts to show you the music which is most popular in your neighboring cities, before moving out to explore the music which is popular in neighboring countries and then in other countries around the world.

One thing that The Pudding's Music Bubble clearly visualizes is that geographical cultural influences still play a huge part in the music we listen to. Some songs may have a huge global appeal. However many songs can be very popular within limited geographical areas. According to the Music Bubble there are currently 203 different No. 1 songs in the world by location. That is a lot of musical diversity around the world.

The Music Bubble is a guided tour of The Pudding's regular Music Borders interactive map, which maps what music people are listening to around the world. The Music Borders map is updated every month to show the current No.1 song in 3,000 cities around the world. As with the Music Bubbles map you can listen to any of the songs on the Music Borders map simply by clicking on a song title on the map.

Long Beach Calling

One of my favorite maps of last year was Peak Map, a fantastic interactive map which can create a joy-plot map for any location on Earth. Joy-plots (or ridgeline plots as they are sometimes called) are inspired by Joy Division's famous album cover for their Unknown Pleasures record. Enter your location into Peak Map and you can create your very own map based on the Unknown Pleasures album cover.

But why restrict yourself to creating maps based on just one famous album cover? Dylan Moriarty for one believes that there are lots of other iconic album covers out there which are just waiting to be given a little cartographic love. 

Dylan Moriarty's Covers article includes a number of examples of maps he has created inspired by iconic album covers. Among these examples is a fantastic interactive map which allows you to create a map of your town inspired by the Clash's London Calling album cover art. Click on your town on the interactive map and you can create a Clash inspired map (like the Long Beach Calling map above).

Covers includes a number of maps inspired by other iconic album covers. It even includes an interactive map which allows you to create your own map inspired by Pink Floyd’s famous Dark Side of the Moon album cover. Other maps in the article are inspired by Velvet Underground’s debut album and Talking Heads' More Songs About Buildings And Food album cover.

The 2020 Lock Down Music Festival

There will be no music festivals this year. Unless you create your own.

At home!

Oslo World can help you get in the festival mood with their new music map, which features music which has been compiled by festival organizers from all over the world. The Oslo World Music Festival is a music festival held in Norway every year. The festival features music from around the globe, but with a primary focus on music from Asia, Africa and Latin America. This year's Oslo World Music Festival has obviously been cancelled. But there is no need to cancel all your fun.

Oslo World has asked festival organizers around the world to compile a list of their favorite top 20 songs. You can listen to all those festival playlists on the new Oslo World - Maps the World interactive music map.

Using the map you can listen to the top 20 songs as decided by some of the biggest festivals in the world. Each festival's song-list includes tunes which have been performed at the festival in the past or is a song that is inspiring the festival organizers right now.

Drive & Listen

I know that the one thing about 'normal life' that you're not missing is your daily commute to and from work. However you really do want to check-out Drive & Listen.

Drive & Listen allows you to virtually drive around different cities across the world while listening to songs playing on a local radio station. It is kind of like a virtual commute to work - but it is much more fun than that. Choose a city from the many on offer (including Paris, New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Los Angeles & many more) and you can sit back and watch a video of a car driving around the city. As you drive you can listen live to a local radio station from your chosen city. You even have the choice to turn on the street noise (which I assume is just the sound from the selected video).

Drive & Listen is a lot more fun than it sounds. It's an interesting way to randomly explore cities of the world. If nothing else it allows you to tune in to the sounds being played by local radio stations around the world.

How to Be Big in Switzerland

If you want to be a pop star in Switzerland then you should sing in Spanish. The top 2 most listened to musical artists in Switzerland are J.Balvin and Ozuna (in that order), both of whom sing in Spanish. About the worst thing you can do if you want to be big in Switzerland is sing in English. Of the top 10 most listened to artists only Lady Gaga and Ed Sheeran sing in English - and they both come way down the top 10 list at 8 and 9 respectively.

24 Heures has analyzed the most listened to artists on YouTube by French speaking people in Switzerland. In What Music Do the Romande Listen to the Most? 24 Heures has mapped the popularity of the 20 most listened to artists in French-speaking Switzerland. For each artist 24 Heures has mapped out their popularity (based on YouTube hits) in each region of the country.

The maps reveal that there is definitely a language and geographical element to the popularity of artists across Switzerland. Perhaps unsurprisingly French speaking artists are generally much more popular in the French speaking regions of Switzerland. In fact some of the French artists on the top 20 list appear to have almost no fans in non-French speaking areas of the country. Conversely German speaking artists are popular in German speaking regions and much less popular in the western French speaking part of the country. English and Spanish speaking artists seem to have a more universal appeal than French and German speaking artists and tend to be popular in both English and French speaking regions (although a few of the Spanish speaking artists seem to be only popular in very specific regions of Switzerland).

The Australian Music Map

The Australian Broadcasting Channels' The Australian Music Map, is an interactive map which allows you to explore and listen to classical music written by Australian composers. The map includes music by composers who are strongly linked to a particluar location and music which has been composed especially for a specific Australian place.

If you select a marker on the Australian Music Map you can listen to the featured track directly from the map. An information window will also open featuring information on the selected composer, the classical music track and its connection with the mapped location.


The connection between sound and place in Australia is nothing new. In fact it dates back as far as the earliest arrival of homo sapiens. Long before maps and compasses were invented the indigenous people of Australia used songlines to navigate the country and find their way around.

Songlines, or dreaming tracks, are the creation myths of Indigenous Australians. They are the paths that the creator-beings took across the world while naming and creating the features of the land. These songlines crisscross Australia and, if you know the songline, you can follow the routes that the creator-beings took across the country.

By singing the songlines indigenous people can navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia's interior. You can learn more about songlines from different parts of Australia with this story map from ABC. Singing the Country into Life explores the songlines of a number of indigenous groups across the whole country.

The ABC storymap helps explain the importance of songlines to aboriginal culture. They tell not only how the land was created but also provide a guide as to how you can navigate that land. Since the destruction of much of the original indigenous way of life they now also provide a valuable connection to threatened indigenous languages and culture.

Lyrics of the World

Do you know where Tony Bennett left his heart or where you can find the hottest spot south of the Copacabana? If you do then you will find this lyrical map quiz a simple two-step in the park.

Lyrical Places is an Esri Geography Treasure Hunt, a map based quiz in which you have to find the  locations mentioned in the lyrics of some famous songs. In the game you are presented with a succession of lyrics. You need to identify the locations which are being sung about. If you know the answer you just need to point to the location on the interactive map.

If you enjoy this treasure hunt there are many more to play. Just head over to Esri's Geography Treasure Hunts site and you can choose from a number of different interactive map based games. These include hunts based on World Heritage Sites, world cuisine and the world's tallest mountains.


New York is the most sung about city in the world. Closely followed by London, LA, Paris and Miami. If you need some help in completing Lyrical Places then you might get a little help from exploring Celebrity Cruises' interactive Map. 'Music Mapped' reveals the most sung about locations across the globe.

To make Music Mapped Celebrity Cruises scanned the lyrics of over 200,000 songs. These songs all appeared in the top 40 of the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Official Singles chart since 1960. Celebrity Cruises noted every mention of a city, town, neighborhood or state which appeared in these songs. This extensive research resulted in a final data set of 2,000 songs by 896 artists with 420 different places mentioned around the world.

The size of the markers on Music Mapped reflects the number of songs which have been sung about that location. If you click on a location's marker you can discover all the songs since 1960 which have mentioned the selected place. You can even click through to listen to each of those songs on Spotify.

How Big is Glastonbury?

The Glastonbury music festival begins today. Two million people pre-registered to buy a ticket for this year's event and, when the tickets did go on sale, the 135,000 tickets sold out in 35 minutes.

135,000 is a lot of people but that number doesn't even come close to the 3.3 million (aggregate) people who attend Donauinselfest in Vienna every year or the 2 million who attend Mawazine in Morocco. The BBC and Statista both agree that Donauinselfest and Mawazine are the two biggest music festivals in the world based on aggregate attendance (although they disagree about which one of the two is actually the largest).


In terms of physical size the Glastonbury site is around 900 acres. If you have difficulty in envisioning how big 900 acres actually is then you can use the Glastonbury Map Overlay to compare an outline of the festival site with any location in the world. If you enter an address into the Glastonbury Map Overlay you can view a polygon of the music festival site overlaid on top of that location.

If you like the Glastonbury map comparison tool then you might also like these other map comparison tools:

Ocean Plastics Pollution - allows you to compare the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with locations across the world
The True Size Of - a map for comparing the size of countries around the globe
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The Eurovision Song Contest Map

The final of the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest takes place in Tel Aviv this Saturday night (the second semi-final takes place tonight). Ten acts from the two semi-finals will be joined by the hosts (Israel) and the 'big five', the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. This year's final is taking place in Israel because they won last year's competition.

You can listen to every country's official song in this year's Eurovision competition on Esri Ireland's Eurovision Song Contest 2019 interactive map. Just click on a country on the map (each country is represented by its national flag) and you can watch a video of the chosen country's song.


I haven't heard any of the songs (I did click on Russia on the map but 'forgot' to turn on my computer's speakers) so I cannot tell you which country is most likely to win this year's competition. Reddit user Mackelowsky has created a static map showing every country in Europe which has never won the Eurovision Song Contest (I assume they are the countries colored red).

The Record Shops of the World

Record Shops are an endangered species. It didn't always used to be this way. Once upon a time record shops were everywhere and the streets of the world were filled with the glorious sounds of phonographic music and the pitter-patter of dancing feet.

Take Paris as an example. In days of yore on nearly every rue and avenue, in every arrondissement of the capital you could find a disquaire or magasin de disques. Or you could at least find one nearby. You can see this for yourself on Disquaires de Paris, an interactive map of Paris' record shops of the 20th Century.

The Disquaires de Paris interactive map shows the locations of the many dealers and vendors of phonographic records in Paris from the end of the 19th century up to the modern day. You can filter the record shops shown on the map by date using the provided timeline control. At the moment the map only shows record shops up to the 1960's. If you select a disquaire on the map you can view the shop's address and, where available, view the artwork used by the store on record sleeves.


Of course record shops haven't completely disappeared from the face of the Earth. There are even a few left in Paris. You can find your nearest surviving record shop on recordstores.love, an interactive map of record shops around the world. Using the map you can search for record shops by location or use the record shops near me option to find the closest stores to your current location.

Vinylhub is a similar project map which is attempting to map all the remaining record shops around the world. Alongside the interactive map of record shops Vinylhub also maintains an Events section which lists record related events and special events being held in record shops across the globe.

Who's Listening to Hikaru Utadu?

#HikaruUtada #(Songs) is an interactive globe which is tracking where people are listening to and commenting on the music of Hikaru Utada around the world. Hikaru Utadu is a Japanese-American singer, who is one of Japan's all time top-selling recording artists.

The success of Hikaru Utada’s latest single 'Face My Fears' can be followed live on this interactive globe. The globe uses 3d bar charts to show how high the song Face my Fears is in the Spotify and Apple Music charts in countries across the globe. If you click on a country on the map you can see how many times the single has been streamed from that country on Spotify and its position in the Apple Music Best chart.

The map also allows you to view the number of times the song has been played on YouTube and view comments being made about the song on Instagram and Twitter. If you select a song from the drop-down menu you can change the map to show the latest news about any of the tracks on Hikura Utadu's latest 4-track CD release as well as the digital single 'Too Proud'.

The Most Sung About Locations

New York is the most sung about city in the world. Closely followed by London, LA, Paris and Miami. Celebrity Cruises has released an interactive map which reveals the most sung about locations across the globe.

To make Music Mapped Celebrity Cruises scanned the lyrics of over 200,000 songs. These songs all appeared in the top 40 of the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Official Singles chart since 1960. Celebrity Cruises noted every mention of a city, town, neighborhood or state which appeared in these songs. This extensive research resulted in a final data set of 2,000 songs by 896 artists with 420 different places mentioned around the world.

The size of the markers on Music Mapped reflects the number of songs which have been sung about that location. If you click on a location's marker you can discover all the songs since 1960 which have mentioned the selected place. You can even click through to listen to each of those songs on Spotify.

New York's Music Map

Online ticket reseller Vivid Seats has mapped out the most popular music genre and the most popular music act in each New York zipcode area. The Most Popular Music Genres in New York map colors zipcode areas to reveal each area's favorite type of music. If you mouseover an area on the map you can also see the area's favorite musical artist or group.

Vivid Seats hasn't provided any information about how they have determined the popularity of different music genres in each area. I assume the data is based on the number of tickets bought for each type of music genre through the Vivid Seats website.

Back in 2015 the Wall Street Journal used jukebox data to create a similar interactive map which showed the most popular songs in New York neighborhoods. The NYC Jukebox Heroes: Musical Map uses data from TouchTunes jukeboxes to show what were the most played songs in different New York boroughs.

If you click on a zip-code area on the WSJ interactive map you can view the top ten most played bands and the top ten played musical artists. Back in 2015 the residents of Manhattan’s East Village loved listening to Beyonce. According to Vivid Seats these days they prefer the more guitar based sounds of Radio Head. However Beyonce will be happy to hear that she is still very popular in parts of Queens and Randalls Island.

Latin music seems to have particularly loyal fans. On both maps the 11368 zipcode area in Queens reports that Romeo Santos is the most popular artist. The Racial Dot Map of America might help to explain why Latin music is so popular in certain areas of New York. I'd hate to be accused of making assumptions about the musical taste of New York neighborhoods based on racial stereotypes but the Racial Dot Map might also provide some insight into why rock is most popular in certain neighborhoods and rap/hip-hop in others.