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Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025) (88mph.fm)
114 points by matteocantiello 17 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 51 comments
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.


Other fun site in that niche (Since 2013), you can select the country + year and just "tune in": https://app.radiooooo.com/


Was really excited until I saw the required sign-up... neat 1920s demo, though.

Best alternative is only by region (LIVE): <https://radio.garden/>


It's a very old site and that came recently, same with the optional premium account. Makes sense to me as it's a small project and they actually legally license the music.


It's a fun project, but I wish the years weren't locked to 5 year intervals.

EDIT: Actually many years are missing, it seems. For Norway there's nothing between 2000 and 1985, but I guess that's how the charts are pulled?

I also noticed that when you only have these 5 year jumps, certain genres are completely missing. Take US charts - Grunge is non-existent, as it had not yet hit the charts in 1990, and by 1995 it was over.


You are 100% right. I started with the 5 year interval for simplicity, and then I noticed what you pointed out for the exact same reason (I grew up with Grunge so this was very obvious to me as well). I started adding more granularity, so e.g. USA now has the full 2010–2025 charts set. My hope is to populate the whole map with higher temporal density moving forward (the https://88mph.fm/suggest feature is there for that reason too). Will probably have to think of a slightly different UI for the time selector, which is a fun challenge


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


Thanks for catching this! Fixing now


the israeli one has a lot of wrong data as well, "2005 year end top 10" all came out in late 90s-2002


Thanks for catching that. It will be fixed over the weekend


This has a lot of overlap with Radiooooo

https://app.radiooooo.com/


Similar idea. This is less of a radio, free and open-source :) https://github.com/matteocantiello/88mph


Proud to be the second person to star this project. This is really great project :)


I would love more granular data, like state or zip code. It would help settle a decade old (and zero stakes) dispute I have with a friend. I'm sure that's your top priority, so if you could get on that, that would be great


lol


I picked India and a random year, 1985 [1]. The number 3 song caught my eye cause it had the thumbnail of a famous movie that came out in 2004, although the correct song played. When I went to the linked Spotify playlist for that year, the included song at number 3 was wrong and linked to the song from the 2004 movie.

Not sure what the data source is, but needs a little bit of cleaning and validation. Not critiquing, this project is awesome, just giving a heads up.

[1]: https://88mph.fm/in/1985


Thanks for the feedback! Yes, there are still some inaccuracies that I am fixing manually. I implemented a suggest feature so that I can get some external help to expand and polish: https://88mph.fm/suggest


I found two obvious issues in the first playlist I tried, and used /suggest, but two out of ten doesn't inspire confidence. Maybe in addition to /suggest, extend your app to include a checker on the compiled playlist. The two songs I noticed, one was released over 30 years later, the other wasn't even from the same century and was an unrelated genre. Just comparing song release date against the playlist year would easily have caught these.


It's pretty cool! I cross "validated" with the charts of where I'm from and the results seem to be fairly accurate.

One question/request: How did you get the data, and would it be possible to filter by language or genre?

TBH I'm actually trying to chase which songs were popular when I was a kid - for example I distinctly remember Astronomia (Tony Iggy) being massive in the club/party "scene" (and even in malls I think!) - but these charts only give what everyone was listening to - so they're pop songs in the local language.


Thanks! Data sources are shown here: https://github.com/matteocantiello/88mph I agree it would be cool to not just expose the top singles of the year, but potentially choose the top songs in a different genre, so that pop isn't dominating. So maybe having the option to choose musical genre first (e.g. Metal, and the whole website's look changes to a dark-gothic UI :) and then navigate the charts of top metal hits for each country. Which reminds me I need to add Finland


Thanks! I looked at a random 2005 chart.

Question, is this data generated by spotify itself, or are you using some other chart-tracking tool?


Nope. I am scraping a number of different sources, mostly un-related to spotify. See https://github.com/matteocantiello/88mph?tab=readme-ov-file#...


Ah thanks, my bad. Looks like the data's from wikipedia for my country then. Off to wiki! Thanks again!


Love this. Checked the Korea section - happy to help fill in gaps through the suggest feature if needed.


I tried to look at the charts for Canada. The result may be representative for English Canada but Canada is really two markets. There is English Canada and French Canada, and both listen to very different music, with different charts. Belgium and Switzerland are probably the same.


Interest point! For Canada I used the canadian billboard as source https://www.billboard.com/charts/canadian-hot-100/ Indeed this might be indexing on English Canada


Hi! I noticed that the button open in spotify opens a premade spotify playlist, but the songs seem to be wrong. I also noticed that the covers on the website match the ones of the mismatched songs. Perhaps those songs only don’t exist on spotify? For refrence i opened the 2005 Japan playlist.


Yeah, I think the matching algorithm is struggling with some non-english speaking countries. I'll have to manually check. If you have the time and want to open an issue here's the link (but no pressure, this is already helpful) https://88mph.fm/suggest


Hah, this is interesting. I just posted something in a similar vein!

It's more US-centric, but a bit more granular across time I suppose https://anthrology.site


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.


Oh la la! Oh la la!

Seriously... I found this very interesting, but for some country (i'm from Italy) maybe the charts are not so accurate (maybe yes, I'm not an expert ;-( ). Despite everything, very nice idea


Thanks! Also from Italy :) For Italian hits I took data from this repo: https://www.hitparadeitalia.it//hp_yends/ But yes, there might be mistakes across the charts. Sources used are documented here: https://github.com/matteocantiello/88mph


Was this vibe coded? I found a mistake, clicked the suggest correction button and I couldn’t find the country in the list.

It’s cool though, brings back memories.


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.


What is this? Every country in the world is listening to the same generic reggaeton song?


I see Kenya


This is such a fun project to browse.

A few things need ironing out as others have mentioned, but I'll be following the project. Cheers!


Suggest a chart doesn't allow for selection of other countries not already present it seems like.

Otherwise, very nice project.


Thanks! The suggest feature should allow to add lists for new countries (just need to change the type): https://88mph.fm/suggest Let me know if it doesn't work for you


Ah it does! My attention span has been ruined.


This is amazing! One of the coolest projects I've seen on here tbh


added a whole new country, curious if my stuff will be added...

nice project :D


Thanks! Switzerland is now up and running e.g. https://88mph.fm/ch/2000


You've got my upvote, nice


Impressed - good job etc


If people are interesting exploring artists from different countries, I built a tool a few month ago that uses wikidata und simple sql queries to get for example a random female artist from Germany: https://piebro.github.io/wikidata-extraction/random.html


Certified AI slope


I listened to my country's old music (India) and although some dates are missing. Overall, really impressive.

The thing that I find amazing is that I have listened to songs from 1950 from the "mera joota hai japaani" to quite some old songs. There were only a few songs that I hadn't heard in total. (I have heard the movie awaara from which the song is, had gotten quite famous in Russia during that time too)

Lata Mangeshkar truly dominated the Indian records. She was truly an Nightingale of India (Rest in peace)

It was from the 1995 -> 2000/2005 shift that I found Indian music to have this feeling of "old" to "new", is this even an Indian specific effect or all across the world?

I feel like the reasons I know the retro songs are because for example the 1950's song is so iconic that nearly 70-75 years later, we are comfortable singing it. I think that also is because of India's Independence being in 1947 and the song being a patriotic song (essentially meaning that no matter what nation's clothes I wear, I will always be an Hindustani)

1995's Tujhe Dekha toh ye jaana sanam and DDLJ and Jaa Simran Jaa is like SRK's magnus opus that the actor is defined by this era.

I think that the one of the reasons that new gen knows about these songs is also because our parents listen to these songs and jukeboxes within the house and my father had the habit of tuning into 92.7 when I had to go to school and they always had retro songs. Although we only listened for 5 minutes but I definitely remember some songs that I heard on the radio (Gulaabi Aakhein)

It also solved one of the mysteries I had on what song is used by the popcorn makers who come near homes, they are/were so catchy. I used to think it was the song "twisted"[0] but that movie came out sort of recent and I couldn't understand but it was with this app that I found that twisted song was a remix of the 1955's third most famous song by lata mangeshkar (mann dole mera tann dole) from the iconic movie naagin.

It truly feels like music sums up some aspects of my country and usually the music which gets famous is because the movie becomes generational too that its quote can be referenced even till today. I can only imagine the same for some other countries as well.

It makes me wish to listen to other countries musics to learn about their culture.

Joota hai japani/writing this comment made me remember of an experience from my life. There is another song from the same movie "awara" known as "Kisi ki muskarahoton par ho nisar" and I was once very ill and y'know how you feel really sad when you're ill or something, I then remember listening to this song and I am not sure but that day I ate some biscuit Krack jack and I really felt happy/better so that had the effect of me preferring those biscuits a lot too. I still eat those biscuits sometimes and listen to this song.

It also reminds me of, I had a music teacher in my school, Prem sir [Prem meaning love], and being honest I have never seen a teacher this patient with kids. He would play songs and we would try to guess. He used to tell us stories about him playing flutes near his house iirc and I still remember him singing "Achutam Keshavam Krishna Damodaram" song in his voice. He was one of the best teachers I had. His passion in music was seen by his patience and how he treated us nicely even if we are shouting as kids and making ruckus, he would then sometimes sing the tunes of song and then have us guess it and the whole class would be pin drop silent except his music and he is an expert of many music instruments. He is such a kind and patient soul. He used to sing these retro songs and the music teachers in our school so that was another source of influence of retro songs even though the gap between my generation and songs are large, but its the teachers and everyone who introduced us.

Thank you for making this app kind stranger. I hope many others feel the same way about some sense of nostalgia/remembering past events like I did with your application.


This message made my day. Thanks so much for sharing! Funny enough, part of the inspiration for this project came from a trip to India I took just a couple of months ago. Love your country and its music


> Funny enough, part of the inspiration for this project came from a trip to India I took just a couple of months ago. Love your country and its music

Your welcome! That's great to hear that my culture/heritage and my nation left a positive impact on ya. I really appreciate your comment and your application. Wishing you many good wishes for your future from my side. Enjoy having a nice day!




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