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Finally, HARD EVIDENCE you can use to support your claim that [YOUR STATE] has a better taste in music than [ANOTHER STATE]. (Note: does not apply if you live in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, and about 20 other states.) Take a peek at Paul Lemere’s “Exploring regional listening preferences” infographic, which calculates the most “preferred” band or artist for all 50 U.S. states, and you’ll learn that Rhode Island > Arizona because Nirvana > Linkin Park. Where did Lemere get his IRREFUTABLE data from?
For this study, I sampled the listening preferences of about a quarter million listeners that have a zip code associated with their account. I aggregated these listeners into regions (state, regional and all-US). To compare regions I look at the top-N most popular artists in each region and look for artists that have a substantial change in rank between the two regions. These artists are the artists that define the taste for the region.
Really, Vermont? Phish? WEED really like it if you POT less obvious…something something marijuana.