Austin, TX is one of the hottest cities in music thanks to hosting the South by Southwest and Austin City Limits music festivals, among hosting a lively live scene all year round. Spotify's Insights blog was interested in the city's unofficial slogan, "Keep Austin Weird," and whether that rang true. Does the capital of Texas divert much from the national norm in terms of the music it listens to?
According to numbers generated by Spotify streams alone, not quite. The service compared the Top 10 listens in Austin to that of the rest of the state, as well as the nation. Unsurprisingly, Austin doesn't listen solely to alternative rock year-round.
Let's break it down comparing the local to national numbers:
-The Top 3 songs on the list were the same for both Austin and the United States as a whole ("Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson, "Thinking Out Loud" by Ed Sheeran and "Sugar" by Maroon 5, respectively).
-The two Top 10s share four other tracks.
-The three singles coming setting Austin apart from the rest of the country come in at nos. 8-10, respectively: "I Don't F*** With You" by Big Sean, "7/11" by Beyoncé and "Elastic Heart" by Sia.
The lesson to take from this is that no matter how hip a city such as Austin or Portland may be labelled as, there will always be more people listening to the Hot 100 singles than the hot new underground artist.
That said, Spotify also demonstrated that Austin is just as pro-local music as it claims. The service tracked what songs Austinites listened to compared to outsiders and found that many of them were natives, including Roger Sellers, Bob Schneider and the Randy Rogers Band among others.
If Austin wants to permanently cement its "weird" status, it should totally pursue this plan to build a statue of Glen Danzig riding a dragon.
