Mapping the Song Every City is Listening To

The useful part

Rotation's Music Map offers a wonderfully simple way to explore that question, with a globe showing the songs currently charting in 166 countries and 174 cities. Each place on the globe highlights a record that the rest of the world isn't playing. Click on a country or city and the record starts playing, turning the map into a kind of interactive global jukebox.

How it works

• You can also switch between different chart sources, including Spotify, Apple Music and Shazam, to see how the picture changes.
• Rather than simply choosing a random country, it works like a loaded die: it picks a record, then a place, and explains why that particular combination has been selected.
• It uses a hand-drawn orthographic globe rendered on a 2D canvas, with the dark side of the Earth illuminated by NASA's Black Marble city lights.
• A small information strip above the globe displays the local time, weather, distance and time until the next sunrise, giving the whole thing the feel of a futuristic seatback display.

Details worth keeping

One of my favourite features is the Shuffle option.