Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

88mph.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 55 posts

Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

#1

Post by matteocantiello »

I built this because I wanted to know what people in Japan were listening to the year I was born. That question spiraled: how does a hit in Rome compare to what was charting in Lagos the same year? How did sonic flavors propagate as streaming made musical influence travel faster than ever? 88mph is a playable map of music history: 230 charts across 20 countries, spanning 8 decades (1940–2025). Every song is playable via YouTube or Spotify. It's open source and I'd love help expanding it — there's a link to contribute charts for new countries and years. The goal is to crowdsource a complete sonic atlas of the world.

Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)
88mph.fm

Re: Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

#2

Post by rubenflamshep »

Very cool! One small UI grip: When I play a song the control at appears in the bottom of the page blocks the footer on the main page.

I assume you looked into automating the charts for new countries/years. What were the blockers for that?

Re: Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

#3

Post by matteocantiello »

rubenflamshep wrote: post #2

Very cool! One small UI grip: When I play a song the control at appears in the bottom of the page blocks the footer on the main page. I assume you looked into automating the charts for new countries/years. What were the blockers for that?

Thanks! I'll fix that. Re charts: English-speaking countries were easy to scrape automatically, and recent charts for most countries were findable too. But older charts for non-English markets are a different story. For old Italian top 10s, for instance, I ended up relying on my own judgment and the fact that I speak the language. Trustable repos simply don't exist for a lot of that material. That's why I think crowdsourcing is the right call here, even if it's slower. And honestly, I like the idea of making this a collective exercise.

Re: Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

#9

Post by pilaf »

Very nice project! That browser tab is staying open for days.

I found a small mistake, the Argentina 2000 list [1] shows "Babasónicos - Ella usó mi cabeza como un revolver", but the actual song by Babasónicos (the one that plays) is titled "Cómo eran las cosas", and "Ella usó mi cabeza como un revolver" is a song by Soda Stereo.

1: https://88mph.fm/ar/2000

Re: Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)

#10

Post by Nzen »

t23414321 wrote: post #4

Great ! Great ! And fun ! But.. and you can skip destinations only by 5 years :( Waiting for more countries (like, in Africa).. and more than first 10 ??

I recommend listening to DJ Earworm's mashup of the top song across the world [0] to hear a greater variety of countries, albeit for this or last year.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDZ78RbAdxU 11 minutes

In fairness to this post, they probably posted as much as they could get easily and consistently. I feel like the same situation reigns for country history in book shops. When I go to a used book store in Queens, New York, I'm not apt to find any books about Jaipur, India. But, if I were to go to Mumbai, India, I could probably find something. So, maybe we should prevail upon or sponsor people in Africa to volunteer their lists.

Post reply on HN