Neil Young is the most distinctly listened to musician in Massachusetts…

The Echo Nest is a Somerville based music intelligence company that provides many of the services that power Spotify, eMusic, Rdio and more. They like to have fun with all of that data, because who wouldn’t? A cool example is Drinkify, a site which tells you what you should drink based on what you’re listening to (in case you were wondering, this is what you’re supposed to drink if you’re listening to Krill (definitely the same Krill)).

This time around, Paul Lamere (Director of Developer Platform for The Echo Nest) used some of that data to show every state’s most distinctly liked artist compared to every other state… that make sense?

So for example, when comparing the music listening habits of those in Massachusetts to those in Maryland, Dinosaur Jr ranks number 1 (in Mass it was ranked 465, in Maryland, 1720 for a difference of 1255). Number two in this comparison is Django Reinhardt (416 in MA, 1652 in MD for a difference of 1236).

“Using this approach we can pick a single signature artist for each state. I do this by finding the top most distinctive popular artist for a state that hasn’t already been selected for a more populous state ” (Lamere, Musicmachinery.com).

And thus, we arrive at Neil Young being the top most distinctive artist in MA that hasn’t already been selected for a more populous state.

Play around with different listening preferences by region with the app here! And if we missed the mark on the explanation, check out Lamere’s own description on his blog).