The experience of listening to music can be incredibly social. Whether it's rocking out to your favorite artist in a stadium filled with thousands of people or singing along to your favorite boy band song with your friends in the comfort of your own home, there's just something about music that connects people.
Spotify has capitalized on the social nature of music with its streaming service that allows you to tell your Facebook friends what you're listening to at the moment, share your favorite tunes in the form of playlists and follow users that you think have cool taste in music. However, Spotify not only lets us each curate our own personal music collections, but it also shows us just how great of an equalizer music really can be.
Spotify launched a web app today called Serendipity, which shows when two people played the same song at the same time around the world. The tracks are featured in a beautifully put together animated map that jumps from song to song, city to city and country to country to show who clicked "Play" on "Bang Bang" at the same time.
The map is truly mesmerizing as it swerves to show you listeners in Baltimore and Concord, North Carolina jamming to The Eagles' "Hotel California, New Yorkers and Brooklynites enjoying Iggy Azalea and Rita Ora's "Black Widow" and people in Bogota and Brisbane, Australia raging to "Break Free" by Ariana Grande and Zedd. You really could just stare at this thing all day.
Kyle McDonald, Spotify's first Media Artist in Residence, created the map, which shows tracks that were recorded during a one-hour period on one day, although we don't know what day that actually was. McDonald explores computer vision and interaction, and he builds tools that help artists think creatively.
Every second, there are at least 10 pairs of people who start listening to the same song within a tenth of a second of each other, according to Spotify's description of Serendipity. "If you're listen[ing] to a popular song, there's a good chance someone else is listening to it in sync with you," the description said. That is both cool and creepy.
Now you don't have to go into Incognito Mode when you're listening to something incredibly embarrassing, because chances are, someone else is listening to that exact same song you would be mortified to have your friends find out about. Isn't it nice to know we're all in this together?
