Spotify has never exactly been hesitant to try new things to help you discover new music, but it's latest effort may well be one of its most inventive to date. Announced today in a blog post, the streaming service's new "Musical Map" promises to give you custom playlists based on what people are listening to in any one of nearly 1,000 cities around the world.
The interesting bit is that Spotify doesn't just fill the playlists with the most popular music in each city, but what the company calls the most "distinctively" popular, or what over-indexes in each of the cities. As Spotify explains it, that means "music that people in each city listen to quite a bit, which people in other cities also do not listen to very much."
Of course, there are a few limitations -- namely, the playlists are based on what Spotify users are listening to, so that leaves some noticable gaps on the world map where the service isn't available (and even some where it is). For the cities covered, though, the playlists each provide plenty of music (most appear to top out at 100 songs), and Spotify is promising to update them all twice a month.
You can explore the map for yourself below, or find a larger version here.
[via Fast Company]
