With 40 million users, Spotify is bound to be streaming the same song to at least two people simultaneously. Now you can see that song sharing play out with Serendipity, a map that shows the locations of the two people listening to the same song at the same time. As the locations and song title briefly appear, a snippet plays. A few seconds later, it's replaced by another next match. Clicking on the map opens a link to whatever song is playing.
Kyle McDonald, Spotify's first artist in residence, spent two months this summer creating the project. He also created a version that updates in real time, though it's available only within the company. The public version uses data recorded over a period of an hour the previous day.
Even if Spotify is showing us day-old data, looking at who's listening to the same songs simultaneously feels a lot more meaningful than just seeing a list of what other people have been hearing. That could be a boon for Spotify, which, like all music-streaming services, is trying to figure out how to make listening to digital music through your headphones as social as listening to a record in a room of friends. Or, as McDonald explained it, "Even though listening to music can be a very private experience, I wanted to see how often this experience is shared."
Rachel Z. Arndt is the author of the essay collection Beyond Measure. Her writing has appeared in Quartz, The Believer, Fast Company, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.
