Global Musical Tastes on Google Maps

Global Billboard

Smells Like Teen Spirit is going down a storm in Russia this week with over a thousand fans on Last.fm. Whilst in the USA over 7,000 listeners are Rolling in the Deep with Adele.

Global Billboard visualises the popularity of top artists and top tracks on Last.fm in (nearly) every country in the world, and in more than 200 metro areas. Using the map it is possible to check out which are the most listened to artists and tracks on Last.fm in different countries.

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Google Maps Makes Beautiful Music

Marker / Music

Forget that Ohio is a Piano, Aberdeen is an orchestra!

This truly amazing Google Map lets you mix your own music by clicking on different locations and playing the music recorded there. You can combine any of the recordings to create your own mix directly from the map.

Darren Solomon and the students and faculty of Northern State University shot over 70 videos of instruments being played around the town of Aberdeen. Twelve of the videos have been added to this Google Map. If you open up the videos you can play and mix the sounds being played in each video. You can even adjust the volume of each video / instrument.

You might expect that the result of opening different videos and mixing different instruments would be a cacophony of sound but I've played with this for a while and every mix results in a pretty serene and gorgeous sound.

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The Geography of Music on Google Maps

Jammap

Jammap provides a great way to explore different music styles around the world. If you drag the map marker on this Google Map and place it on a country the map loads songs uploaded to Jamendo from that country.

For example, if you drag the marker to Brazil you can listen to some great Latin music. If you like a particular track you can even grab a link and share it with your friends. Here's a great Dz Maana track from Algeria.

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Gigs on Google Maps with Video Previews

Bill's Map

Bill is a genius and I love this map.

Bill's Map is a Google Map of upcoming gigs in Austin, Texas. It is possible to search the map for upcoming shows by using the date slide-bar at the top of the map. You can then choose to view just the recommended gigs or all gigs on the map.

The genius idea is that when you click on a marker for a gig you can view a YouTube video of the band (where available). This means that you are able to search the map for gigs and get a quick preview of the bands or artists to help you decide where you want to go.

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A Google Map of Musical Memories

Grammy's - Music is Life is Music Map

It seems I'm a little late with this one. I assume this Google Map was created for the Grammy Awards back in February. But never mind, it's still a great map and it still works.

The Music is Life is Music map lets you drop songs on places that you associate with the music. Using the map it is therefore possible to express how music can take you back to a special place at a special time. Or, if that doesn't float your boat, you can just use the map to listen to some great songs added by other users.

Music is Life is Music apps are available for both the iPhone and Android phones. The apps let you drop music on the map when you are out and about.

Via: @andreitr

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Music Promo Street View Game

Wounded Rhymes

Lykke Li is a Swedish artist whose new album 'Wounded Rhymes' is out this week.

To help launch the new album a cool Street View based application has been released. Using the app you can follow Lykke Li's path to places of emotional significance in her life with Google Maps Street View and Google Earth. On your journey you also get the chance to listen to Li's songs.

To find Lykke Li's path in the promotion you need to follow the directions indicated by a compass rose in Google Maps Street View. The compass points in the direction that you have to travel and the distance to travel is given in metres. When you arrive at the specified destination, by navigating with the normal Street View controls, you are rewarded with the video of a song from Lykke Li.

You are now ready to move onto the next destination. Press the 'Search for the next rhyme' button and you will be taken to the next Street View hunt. The application uses Google Earth to zoom you out of the current location and transport you to the next part of the game.

If you register you can even save your progress and come back another time to continue your journey.

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Limp Bizkit Videos on Google Maps

Follow the Nookie

Fans of Limp Bizkit will be sure to love this Google Map that displays hundreds of Limp Bizkit videos taken from the band's tours.

You can select to view videos from 1996 to 2010 using the drop-down menu. Once you have selected a year Limp Bizkit's tour appearances from that year are displayed on the map. If you click on any of the displayed map markers live videos from that concert are shown in the map sidebar.

If you select a video from the sidebar you can watch the video directly from the map.

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Video, Weather & Google Maps!

Lissie 'Cuckoo' - Interactive Music Video

You have to love all the amazing Google Maps based music videos that are appearing at the moment. A couple of week's ago the world was amazed by the Google Maps and HTML5 experiment from The Wilderness Downtown. Now American singer/songwriter Lissie has released this amazing Google Maps, music video and weather forecast all rolled into one.

Essentially the application uses a spilt screen to display the video of Lissie's new track 'Cuckoo' at the top of your browser window and a Google Map at the bottom. The Google Map uses a live weather feed to display the latest weather around the world.

However that's not all it does. If you click on any of the weather symbols on the map the music video switches to a video of a Spanish language weather presenter reading the weather for your selected location. Have a look at the screen cast above - but make sure you visit the site to actually listen to Lissie's song - it's pretty good!

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Sting: Saviour of the Universe

Earth Destroyers

Will you look at that - Sting really is the saviour of the universe.

Enter a band name into Earth Destroyers and it will show you how eco-friendly the band's touring schedule is. Earth Destroyers calculates the total distance travelled from the first to the last gig on a band's tour. If an artist has an average inter-show distance of greater than a 1,000 km it is branded an 'Earth Destroyer'. If an artist averages less than 1,000 km it wins the accolade of 'Earth Saver'.

The application also displays a Google Map of the artist's tour so you can see just how inefficient the tour is. The event data for the map and the app comes from Bandsintown.

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Google Maps Go Pop

Europopped: On the Map

Not since Soren Johannessen's Eurovision Song Contest 2010 Map has so much terrible music been assembled in one place. Google Map guru Pamela Fox has created this music map to showcase the wonderful awfulness of Europop.

The map includes a large number of embedded videos of Europop songs garnered from the Europopped blog. If you click on a map marker an information window opens in which you can watch some terrible Europop videos from that country. You can also click through to read the related blog post about the song on the Europopped blog.

All joking aside, there are a couple of really interesting things going on under the hood in this map. First off, the numbered map markers (representing the number of videos mapped at that location) are created using the Google Chart API.

Secondly, instead of using the default Google Maps API information windows Pamela has used a centerbox javascript class. This custom information window opens centred in the browser window and optimises the space to display the embedded videos.

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Rapping Google Maps

The Rap Map
Rap Genius is using Google Maps in its ongoing mission to help explain rap lyrics. Lyrics on Rap Genius include orange highlights that when clicked open up explanations. Now, when those lyrics refer to a location, you can view the referenced place on Google Maps.



If you click the 'Map it!" link in the explanation box the Rap Map opens centred on the location. Every marker on the Rap Map is linked to a different rap song. If you click on a marker you can read the referenced lyric, a brief explanation and a street level photograph of the location.



The map sidebar includes links to all the map markers. The links are organised by city so you can quickly find all the rap lyrics about a particular location.

RapMaps


"You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge."
- Straight Outta Compton, NWA

Google Maps Street View allows anyone to explore any hood anywhere. Rap music seems the most geographically aware of music forms. So what better idea than to map rap songs so listeners can virtually explore the locations being rapped about on Google Maps?

RapMaps does it exactly that. It is a mashup of Google Maps and YouTube rap videos. The videos are geo-tagged by their location. So when Kam sings Watts Riot you can now explore Watts on the map in Street View at the same time as watching the video.

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Tracking Bands with Google Maps

Music Enthusiast

If you want to find where your favorite band or artist is playing you could do worse than search Music Enthusiast. Music Enthusiast searches Eventful for upcoming concerts and plots the results on a Google Map.

To view the scheduled concerts of a band or artist you just need to enter their name. Music Enthusiast then searches Eventful and adds a map marker for each concert date it finds. It even plots the concerts in chronological order. The green marker shows the first concert on the tour and the red marker shows you the location of the tour's finale.

Music Enthusiast also searches YouTube for you. So once you have finished searching for concerts you can click on a YouTube thumbnail and watch a video of your favorite band.

Hat-tip: Mapperz

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Google Street View Music Videos

A new Street View inspired music video has popped up on YouTube. This time the video features Street View images from Helsinki, Finland and music from Superchrist.

Superchrist: Journey Is My Destination


Banshee Beat
Here's another cool music video produced by stitching together a drive on Street View.



Race You There


MOKUM State Of Mind


Editor's - Interactive Street View Video
This one you have to try out yourself!

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Finding Concerts with Google Maps

Yamusica

Yamusica uses the Google Maps, Last.fm and Bandintown APIs to bring you information about live music events, concerts and venues in your town. You can search the site by location or by venue and get a list of all upcoming concerts.

If you click on the 'event details' button on any of the returned results you can get details about the band / artist, dates and times of the concerts and a Google Map of the venue.

Also See

• Gruvr
• JamBase
• Map Channels Events

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Eurovision Song Contest Winners Mapped

Winners of the Eurovision Contest 1956-2009

What do 'Boom Bang-a-Bang', 'La, la, la', 'Ding-A-Dong', 'A-Ba-Ni-Bi' and 'Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley' have in common?

Well, they just happen to be some of the most inspired lyrics to ever come out of Europe. That's right each of these songs is a past winner of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Thanks to microformats.dk you can now watch a video of every winning song from the Eurovision Song Contest, ever! The map contains embedded YouTube videos for every winning song and the videos are mapped to the country of the winners.

You can also watch videos of the 34 songs, so far decided, that will feature in this year's Eurovision Contest on the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 Map (also from microformats.dk).


Google Maps Mania is not connected with the Eurovision Song Contest maps and can not be held responsible for any damage caused to your sanity by listening to these songs.

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Google Map of Eurovision Song Entries

Eurovision Song Contest 2010


Unfortunately the Eurovision Song Contest is once again fast approaching. In what is now becoming an annual exercise in self-harm Soren Johannessen, of microformats.dk, has decided to produce another Google Map mashup featuring videos of all the song entries.

The Eurovision Song Contest was introduced after World War II so that European countries could assault their neighbours with cheesy pop songs rather than gun and bombs. There is a time honoured formula to winning the contest. The winning song has to be a bouncy, strangely familiar tune, with a catchy chorus of nonsensical words.

On this basis my tip for the winning song is from the Netherlands, 'Ik Ben Verliefd'. The chorus "sha-la-lie, sha-la-la (repeat ad infinitum) is just about nonsensical enough to appeal to the hordes of Euro-grannies who will decide the winner.

So far only 11 out of the 39 participating countries have decided on their entries, so there is still time for a dark horse to enter the race. Soren says he will be updating the map each week to include the latest entries. Just one question Soren, "Why, oh why"?

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Find Your Nearest Haiti Benefit Concert

Gruvr Haiti Relief Concert Finder

There are lots of smaller Haiti benefit concerts being held around the world. Gruvr, the Google Maps mashup of nearby concerts, has created a new Google Map that automatically locates the Haiti concerts nearest to your location.

The map animates through the 10 closest events. Gruvr says that at the moment about 30 new Haiti events are being discovered per day. The normal Gruvr reminder function works for Haiti concerts. Just add the shows to your favorites list, tell Gruvr your email, and you can receive e-mail reminders of your nearest events.

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Songs of New York on Google Maps

The New York Music Project

In honor of the long history of songs about New York, the Huffington Post have decided to map every single song lyric that name-checks a location, business, corner, monument, etc., in the city of New York.

The Huffington Post has got the ball rolling by mapping 40 songs, including George Cohan giving his regards "to Broadway" and Lou Reed "waiting for the man" on 125th and Lexington. However this is a collaborative map and the Huffington Post want your help in mapping New York's musical tributes.

To submit a song all you need are the lyrics and a picture of the location (if you don't have one use Google Maps Street View to grab an image). Sadly the one thing missing from this music map is the music itself.

Via: @geoparadigm

Other Music Maps

• A Musical Tour of London - Street Views of famous album covers shot in London.
• RapMaps - rap songs mapped.
• Copenhagen Music - songs about different locations in Copenhagen.
• Music Map - songs about different locations with YouTube videos.
  
• Word Magazine Album Covers Map
• MappaMusica - discover the favourite artists of different countries.

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Geo-Tagging Music with Google Maps

Soundtrckr

Soundtrckr is a social music application for smartphones and the web that, amongst other things, lets you geo-tag songs with Google Maps. The application allows you to share songs with your friends via the contacts on your smart phone and also allows you to share song information on Twitter and Facebook.

When you listen to a song you can geo-tag it to where you heard it or to a place that you might associate with that particular track. Then when your friends pass near that location they will receive an alert

Another smart feature of Soundtrckr is the ability to seed radio stations based on tracks or artists that you like. What's more you can even broadcast your created radio station to your friends directly from your phone.

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