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[Antiochus]

From the New York Times, where the UpShot data analytics staff did a fascinating snapshot of just where a current roster of 50 artists from the BIllBoard Top 100 are most popular at. That is, in terms of their YouTube music video viewership:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/upshot/music-fandom-maps.html

YouTube has become a dominant force in the music industry in the last few years, particularly among younger people. With the help of YouTube's geocoded streaming data, we set out to map the contours of music fandom and culture in the United States.

Of the artists on the Billboard Top 100 this spring, we looked at the 50 that were most watched on YouTube in the United States between January 2016 and April 2017. Each map shows relative popularity in different parts of the country. If one part of a map is lighter, it doesn't mean people there weren't watching the artist's videos; it just means fans were more likely to listen to a variety of other artists.

See the complete set of fan maps below, listed in order of YouTube views in our data. (You can use your left or right arrow key to cycle through the maps.)

The artists listed in the link above include perennial favorites such as Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Coldplay, Linkin Park, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Taylor Swift, etc. But it also includes up and comers such as Post Malone, 21 Pilots and relatively new heavyweights such as Ed Sheeran, Calvin Harris, Shawn Mendez, etc.

In any case, here some intriguing results:

This is Lady Gaga's map, which shockingly shows she is not as strongly established in the Eastern Seaboard as compared to the West. For some reason Alaskans (!) adore her:

Justin Timberlake's map demonstrates he is largely a big, blue, metropolis phenomenon, and his home state cares little for him:

Linkin Park's map is perhaps the most shocking. They are a quintessential Southern Californian band, and earned their plaudits there the most early on. But now it appears most Californians have largely abandoned them. Their current strength seems to be among downscale, exurban/rural inhabitants of the Southwest.

What other gems and explanations can be found in that NYT's article?