The World of Music

cXc Music is an interactive map which anyone can use to share their music with the world. It can also be used to explore the music of the world.

Every circle on the cXc Music is a song. Click on a song's and you can listen to the song directly from the map. Using the map you can obviously browse and listen to music by location. You can also use the 'mood', 'format' and 'genre' menus to filter the type of songs shown on the map.

The colors of the markers on the map indicate the mood and genre of each song. The size of the markers show a song's popularity. You can vote for a song yourself by clicking on the big yellow up button which appears in the song's information window when you click on its marker.


You can also find and listen to music from around the world on the marvelous Radiooooo, global music map. Radioooo allows you to listen to music from anywhere in the world and from any decade going back to 1900.

To start listening to music on Radiooooo you just need to click on a country on the map. You can then select a decade using the buttons at the bottom of the map. The map will then automatically stream music from the country & decade that you have chosen. Radiooooo also includes an option to select the 'mood' of music that you wish to hear (slow, fast or weird). The 'Taxi' option even allows you to select to listen to music from more than one country.


Spotify's Musical Map of the World allows you to listen to locally distinctive music in cities around the world. Using the Musical Map you can select from around a thousand global cities and listen to music that appeals to local people who use the Spotify music streaming service.

When you select a city on the map you can view a Spotify playlist of the most popular distinctive music from that city. This playlist is not necessarily the most popular songs listened to on Spotify in the chosen city but the most 'distinctive'. In other words this is music that people in the chosen city listen to a lot, which people in other cities do not listen to so much.

Mapping the Death of Manufacturing Jobs

In the last 30 years the USA has lost around 5 million manufacturing jobs. In 1990 around 17.7 million Americans were employed in manufacturing. In 2018 the sector employed 12.7 million. The CSIS iDeas Lab and the CSIS Trade Commission on Affirming American Leadership has created a story map which explores and explains where the decline of manufacturing jobs in the United States has hit employment the hardest.

The Landscape of Economic Change: 1990-2018 visualizes the fall in the number of manufacturing jobs across the United States. One of the hardest hit areas has been around the Great Lakes in the Industrial Midwest. This region has suffered particularly from the decline in the low-skill, labor intensive manufacturing sector. Another region badly hit by the decline in manufacturing has been the Piedmont South - which has suffered from the fall in textile and furniture manufacturing jobs.

Despite the fall in manufacturing jobs the 100 counties in the U.S. where manufacturing was most concentrated have actually seen a rise in overall employment because the growing service sector created a net growth in jobs. There are even a few regions which have experienced a growth in manufacturing employment. For example in the Midwest a number of counties have experienced a growth in the number of manufacturing jobs.

Despite the fall in manufacturing jobs the manufacturing sector itself has actually grown in the last 30 years. The manufacturing sector now produces roughly 30% more than it did in 1990. However, despite this rise, the drive to automation has led to an overall decline in the number of manufacturing jobs.

The Landscape of Economic Change story map was created using Mapbox's new Scrollytelling Template. This template is designed to help you create 'scrollytelling' map stories. This Mapbox scrollytelling demo map introduces the scrollytelling map format and shows you what you can achieve with the template.

Trump's Fake News Network

In the last Presidential election Trump ran a hugely successful Facebook ad campaign. By micro-targeting vulnerable Facebook users with fake news and disinformation the Trump team were able to reach and influence millions of voters. Towards the end of last year Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would allow the Trump campaign to again run fake ads in this year's Presidential election. Trump's campaign team are therefore gearing up to spread even more fake news and disinformation during the 2020 Presidential campaign.

It is believed that the Trump campaign has now managed to compile on average around 3,000 data points on every voter. In other words they know exactly which fake news and which disinformation triggers which voters and which voters are most likely to spread fake news and disinformation memes.

In the 2020 Presidential election the Trump campaign intends to extend their fake news disinformation campaign much, much further. For this year's election they are developing a texting platform which is designed to exploit Trump supporters into spreading disinformation and fake news by passing on Trump campaign text messages to everyone in their phone contacts. The Trump campaign is also setting up hundreds of fake local newspaper websites all across the USA.

Research has shown that Americans trust local news networks more than they trust the national media. The Trump campaign and the alt-right have therefore been busy setting up websites across the United States which appear to be local newspapers or news services. However during the election they will be used to spread Trump's fake news and promote disinformation about his Democratic opponent. MassMove has set up a GitHub page and an interactive map to monitor these fake local news sites, all of which have been designed to spread fake news and disinformation during the 2020 election campaign.

The MassMove Local Journals map shows the locations of towns across the USA where a fake news site has been established. For example just in Houston the Trump campaign has set up fake news sites called the Houston Republic, SE Houston News, East Houston News, West Houston News, SW Houston News.

You can learn more about Trump's 2020 fake news disinformation campaign on the Mass Move - Attack Vectors GitHub repository.

The Gay Guides of America

Starting in the 1960's a businessman called Bob Damron started publishing the Damron Address Book travel guides. The book published the names and addresses of all the gay bars Bob Damron knew from his travels across the country.

Now Mapping the Gay Guides has undertaken the task of mapping the queer geographies of all the Damron Address Books. The first stage of Mapping the Gay Guides concentrates on the American South. So far the map shows all the gay locations from the Damron Address Book for 12 southern states.

The interactive map contains the location of each entry in the Damron Address Book from 1965 to 1980. A timeline control allows you to explore these locations by year, while drop-down menus allow you to filter the locations by type and feature. The feature menu includes Bob Damron's notes on an establishment, such as whether the establishment was dangerous, raunchy, elegant and whether it had a more mature or younger clientele.

Mapping the Gay Guides includes an interesting "Vignette's" section which uses the data from the Damron Address Books to explore interesting case studies or stories from recent American gay history. For example the data is used to examine Southern Black Queer Spaces and the Paramount Steak House (a gay venue which has existed since the publication of the first Damron Address Book).

Also See

Europe Gay Guide - maps and guides to gay venues in cities across Europe
Destination Pride - a guide to the safety of holiday destinations around the world for LGBTQ+ travelers
The Pudding's Gayborhoods Guide - uses various sources to determine the gay neighborhoods in U.S. cities

Animated Coronavirus Timeline Maps

Animated maps showing the spread of an epidemic over time can help us to learn more about how a virus is transmitted and how it spreads. For example HealthMap's Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 interactive map shows how Covid-19 quickly spread from Wuhan to the rest of China, through Asia and out to the rest of the world.

The map shows the number of reported Covid-19 cases in locations around the world. If you press the 'Animate Spread' button at the top-left of the map you can watch a day-by-day animation of the data showing how the disease spread around the globe in just a few weeks.

NBC New York's Covid-19 map actually works better as an animated map. This map uses Johns Hopkins data to visualize the spread of Covid-19 over time. The NBC map includes a timeline control which allows you to more easily explore the data by specific date.

Going forward it might be interesting to add more information to these animated maps to more clearly identify and indicate the first cases reported in different locations and to identify significant clusters. For example the Seattle nursing home which saw the first significant fatalities in the USA and the Grand Princess and the Diamond Princess cruise ships which both saw significant numbers of passengers catching Covid-19.

Where Could Coronavirus Hit?

Covid-19 is a virus which has a far more devastating impact on the old than it does on the young. The chances of dying from Covid-19 appear to be around ten times higher for someone over the age of 70 than for someone aged under 60. And the younger you are then the far less likely you are to die from Covid-19.

It is possible for governments and health authorities to use this age related mortality rate to predict where medical demands from Covid-19 are likely to be highest. Areas with the highest proportions of elderly citizens may experience more demand for medical care than other areas. In Social Vulnerability, Age, and Coronavirus Adventures in Mapping has mapped out counties in the United States with the highest proportion of people aged over 60 years old.

The age map (shown above) uses scaled markers to show the proportion of people over 60. It also highlights the 20 counties with the highest proportion of over 60s. The map reveals a number of clusters of counties with elderly populations in Florida, in northern Michigan & Wisconsin and in Colorado.

Adventures in Mapping has also mapped out the most vulnerable counties in the United States based on the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index. The Social Vulnerability Index rates the capability of communities to respond to a disease outbreak (or natural disaster). These ratings are based on such factors as poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing.

Mapping the Social Vulnerability Index and Proportion of Over 60s on the same map (using Wurman Dots) helps to identify the counties which may be most in need of support during the Covid-19 outbreak. Adventures in Mapping has identified Mohave County, Arizona and Highlands County, Florida as two counties with populations over 100,000 with a Social Vulnerability Index of 0.75 and more than a third of the population being aged over 60.

Mapping the World's Empty Airports

One result of the spread of Coranavirus Covid-19 around the world has been a large reduction in people traveling by air. A few weeks ago, in 13,000 Missing Flights, the NYT visualized the scale of the reduction in air traffic in China by mapping air flights before and after the outbreak. The reason why this slowdown in air traffic was so visible in China was because the Chinese government suspended flights in and out of Wuhan and most airlines across the globe cancelled flights to and from China.

However mapping air flights in other areas of the world isn't as effective in visualizing the global drop in air traffic. This is because many airlines continue to fly their normal service despite the huge drop in passenger numbers. In Europe EU rules says that airlines have to maintain at least 80 percent of their normal service in order to keep their allocated flights. This means that airlines are unable to reduce their number of flights without being in danger of losing their routes. For example Virgin Airlines says it is being forced to fly empty planes to ensure that they do not lose their allocated European flight slots.

Therefore visualizing the number of planes flying in Europe does not provide an accurate picture of the drop in the number of people actually flying. This has meant that Wanderlog has had to think of more creative ways of measuring the global fall in air passenger numbers. Their How empty are airports around the world interactive map visualizes the effect of Covid-19 on airports around the world using data from Google Maps.

Wanderblog use Google Map's 'live popularity' feature to measure how busy airports are around the world compared to their normal traffic. If you click on a business on Google Maps you will sometimes see a graph (like the one above) showing how busy the business is compared to its normal levels. This 'live popularity' data is calculated using a combination of anonymized location data and Google search traffic.

Wanderlog has used Google's 'live popularity' feature to map traffic at the world's 300 busiest international airports (compared to their usual traffic). I have no idea how accurate Google's 'live popularity' data is but the map does seem to show that some of the airports with the largest drop in passenger numbers are where you would expect them to be (e.g. China, South Korea, Japan and Italy).

Aerial Imagery from the Second World War

If you live in London it is now possible to view aerial imagery of your neighborhood which was captured nearly 75 years ago, from just after the Second World War. After World War II the Royal Air Force methodically flew over the whole of Britain to photograph the country from the air. This resulted in 24,000 photographs of London - aerial photographs which you can now explore on the Layers of London interactive map.

This aerial imagery provides a stunning visual record of London just after World War II. Because the aerial imagery was captured just after the end of the war the bomb damage from the Blitz is clearly visible in lots of places. For example in my street in East London I can clearly see where the bombs fell.



At the top left of this picture and on the far right you can see the 19th Century terraced housing which survived the German bombs (I live in one of the houses shown top left). All the white areas are where houses were destroyed in the Blitz. When this aerial image was captured the bomb sites had clearly been cleared and have been replaced with what looks to me like temporary structures (they look like large Nissan huts but are probably too big to be Nissan huts).

The RAF Aerial Collection on Layers of London is being mapped by volunteers. Not all of the RAF's aerial photographs have been mapped. If you want to help Layers of London complete the process of georeferencing the RAF's aerial photographs then you can take part at Be a Laymaker. This process involves you overlaying the historical pictures over the correct location on an interactive map.

Sunken Ships of World War I & II

Sunken Ships of the Second World War is an interactive map showing the locations of 13,000 ships which were sunken during the Second World War. The map shows Allied and Axis ships which were sunk in action and does not include ships which were sunk as a result of natural disasters or accidents.

The blue markers on the map show the locations of sunken ships belonging to the Allies and the red markers show sunken Axis ships. If you click on a ship on the map you can read details about when and how it was sunk, the number of casualties and who it was sunk by. These details also include photographs of the ship and any relevant links to other sources of information about the ship.

The map sidebar updates to provide information on the sunken ships in the current map view. The bar chart below the map shows how many ships were sunk in each month. You can select a month on this bar chart to view the locations of all the ships sunken in that month on the map.



The Forgotten Wrecks of the First World War is a similar interactive map, this time plotting the locations of historical wrecks from the Great War. It shows the known locations of wreck sites in and around the seas, coasts and rivers of the UK.

The wrecks visualized on the map include merchant & naval ships, passenger, troop & hospital ships and submarines. It also shows the locations of ports, wharfs and coastal buildings which were wrecked during the war. You can search the map for individual wrecks by the name of the vessel. You can also refine the wrecks shown on the map by vessel type, use at time of loss or by year.

If you select an individual wreck on the map then you can view details about the type of vessel and the year it was wrecked. You can also learn more about the vessel's size, cargo, destination and the name of the captain. The details for each wreck also include any information that is known about the vessel's loss and, where available, images of the wrecked vessel.

Responsible Maps of Covid-19

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak there have been over 110,000 confirmed cases around the globe and there have been 3,841 deaths. When I first posted a link to the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 Dashboard, on January 23rd, there had been 555 confirmed cases and 17 deaths. In just over six weeks the disease has had a truly devastating global impact.

The Johns Hopkins map was the first visualization of Covid-19 that I linked to and it is still the best visualization of the global reach of the virus that I have seen. On the whole news organizations around the world have posted some truly terrible maps which seem to have been designed more to alarm readers than inform.

Kenneth Field has posted some advice on the Esri blog about Mapping coronavirus, responsibly. The article explores a number of different visualization methods which can be used to map Covid-19 and discusses the advantages and pitfalls of each method.

Datawrapper has now released a series of maps, charts and graphs that show the latest numbers about Covid-19 in a responsible manner. 17 responsible live visualizations about the coronavirus, for you to use includes maps showing the number of Covid-19 cases, the number of deaths and the number of recoveries around the globe, in the United States and in Germany.



Around the world 62,097 people have recovered from Covid-19. In both China and South Korea the number of new cases reported each day is declining. In China the number of people recovering from Covid-19 has outpaced the number of new cases since February 19th.