Where are they from?

On a phone? Tap a bubble or bar to see its details. These charts have more room on a laptop or tablet.

Every artist, on the map

Each bubble is a place. Bigger means more artists from there, and color shows how many albums each of those artists has had on a list: purple for one, up to gold for several. Start with countries, then double-click a bubble to zoom in a level, to states and regions and then to cities. In London and New York City, one more double-click goes down to the boroughs. You can also use the buttons, drag to pan, and scroll to zoom. Hover or click a bubble for details, or search for an artist or a place to see who is there.

Interesting observations

The map shows all 25 years at once. The sections below take that picture apart: how the mix of places has changed over time, what's inside the biggest cities, which places stay, take the top spot, or arrive new, how the Northwest and Bay Area scenes have fared, and how big the hometowns are.

The map is mostly two clusters of big bubbles, with a long tail of small ones. is the biggest hometown by artists, ahead of and , and the lists are overwhelmingly American, with Britain a distant second. But the U.S. share has slipped, from % of entries in the first decade to % in the last ten years.

Home turf, over the years

Start with the whole world, then click into a group to see what is underneath it. Each band is a place's share of every year's list, so the bands stack up to the share for the place you are in. Click a band, or its name below the chart, to go deeper: a country, then its biggest regions, then the biggest cities. The three largest places at each step are shown, and everything else is grouped as "Other."

The bands use a three-year average to smooth the bumps. Hover to see the actual numbers for any single year. The number next to each name is the total albums from that place across all 25 lists.

Two stories stand out. The first is that KEXP's hometown held steady: Seattle supplied about a tenth of the entries, % in 2001–2010 and % in 2016–2025. The second is that the growth is happening elsewhere, in London and in the long tail of countries outside the U.S., U.K., and Canada. The U.S. share fell from % to %, and the U.K. and the countries beyond the U.S., U.K., and Canada picked up the difference.

Inside the biggest cities

Two cities have a borough on file for most of their artists: New York City and London. Each bar below is the number of artists from that part of town. Where no borough is recorded, the artist is counted under "Not specified."

Brooklyn alone has nearly three times as many artists as Manhattan. London's artists are spread over more boroughs, led by with and with . Los Angeles has far less detail: neighborhoods like Silver Lake and Hollywood are named for only of its artists, so they didn't get a chart.

Risers, fallers, and new arrivals

Zooming out from any one city, three more numbers sum up how the map has shifted between the first decade of lists and the last ten years.

Growth and decline here are measured as a city's share of the whole list, so they show who gained room and who lost it. gained the most, points, and lost the most, points. In relative terms, grew fastest: its share went from % to %, more than times as large. The cities that faded are mostly ones that were once regulars. The newcomers are a different kind of change: the number of home countries on a single list was to in the 2000s and has been to in the last four years. Most of the newcomers each have one or two albums, but together they are why the map has more small dots at the edges than it used to. (Puerto Rico counts as its own country here because that is how MusicBrainz files it.)

Staying power, top spots, and new arrivals

Three more ways to look at places across all lists: which ones are always there, which ones have produced the #1 album, and how often a brand-new hometown shows up.

Each row in the first chart is a place and each square is one list. The brighter the square, the more albums from that place on that list.

Albums from places appear on every list: . The next group misses a few years: .

The top spot is harder to win. In the second chart, each bar is the number of #1 albums from a place, and the gold marker is how many it would have if the #1 albums followed each place's share of all list entries.

The #1 albums came from different artists in places. Seattle has , against about if #1s followed share of entries; New York City has against . Several places rest on a single band: . With only #1 albums, one more or less changes a place's count, so read this loosely.

Last, how often does a place show up for the first time? In the third chart, each bar is the number of places that appeared on a list for the first time that year. The first list is left out, since every place on it was new.

The pace slowed as the map filled in, but it never stopped: of the places appeared for the first time in the last ten years, about a year. The list added .

Two local scenes

KEXP has two shows built around local music, and each defines its region. The chart below builds off of these definitions. Audioasis, from Seattle, takes submissions from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, and British Columbia. Vinelands, from the Bay Area, covers San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and the cities around them, and KEXP also names Northern California more widely. In the chart, the Bay Area means those core cities plus Northern California out to Sacramento, Modesto, and Stockton. Here is each region's share of every year's list. The two panels have different scales, because the Northwest is several times bigger than the Bay Area.

Dots are each year's actual share; the line is a three-year average. The teal band marks the 2024 and 2025 lists, the first two after KEXP began broadcasting in San Francisco. A year's share is the share of that year's list, and the lists were 90 to 91 albums long until 2024, when they grew to 100.

The Northwest has supplied roughly % of all list entries, but the year-to-year swings are large, from % in to % in , and it has run lower since the mid-2010s. The Bay Area is much smaller. Most years it has one to four albums on a list. KEXP began simulcasting on KEXC 92.7 FM in San Francisco in March 2024, so the 2024 and 2025 lists are the first to come after it. Those two lists hold Bay Area albums from artists, which is too few to read anything into yet. One artist more or less moves the line, so this is one to check again after the 2026 list.

Big cities and small towns

How big are the places these artists come from? Size here is the population of the city itself today, from GeoNames, so a small town beside a big city counts as a small town. The first chart groups every hometown by size and follows each group's share of the lists over time.

Each band is a size group's share of every year's list, using a three-year average. Hover for the actual counts for any single year. The number next to each group is its total albums across all 25 lists.

Small towns held steady at about %: places under 100,000 supplied between % and % of entries in every five-year stretch. The change is in the middle and at the top. Cities of 100,000 to 1 million, a group that includes Seattle and Portland, went from % to %, while cities of 3 million or more, led by , went from % to %.

Size is one thing, but the "small town artist makes it big" idea is really about how much music a place produces for its size. The second chart counts artists per 100,000 residents, for places with at least three artists on the lists, with the three biggest cities below for comparison.

Per resident, Seattle is the outlier: artists from a city of , or per 100,000, about times the rate of the next place. Behind it come much smaller cities such as . The very smallest hometowns, like , are one-artist stories, which is why the chart only includes places with at least three artists.

City populations: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), with Wikipedia for a few places GeoNames did not list. They are today's population of the city itself, not the metro area and not the population when the artist grew up, and they are not perfectly comparable from one country to another. The biggest difference is Australia: GeoNames gives metro-area figures for its cities (Melbourne million, Sydney million) but the city itself for London, New York City, and most other places, so Melbourne and Sydney land in the 3 million or more group. Leaving Australia's big cities out, that group's share goes from % to %, so the rise is real but a little smaller. entries, from , have no size on file and are left out of the charts in this section.