Spotify's 'Serendipity' shows you a map of people playing the same song in real-time

As Spotify is the largest pure music service in the world, the company can do some pretty interesting things with the data it collects from listeners — as is evident with its latest feature, Serendipity.

Serendipity is a map that shows when two Spotify users are listening to the same song at the same time — or more accurately, the two users must have started the same song within a tenth of a second.

For example, a Spotify user in Rostock, Germany and a separate user in Neath, Wales happen to be listening to John Legend song All of Me as you can see in the image above. The visualization shows two new matches every few seconds while the song plays in the background. (I have to say, I’m disappointed in the number of Nicki Minaj fans spread out across the entire planet.)

The feature was created by Spotify’s first media artist in residence, Kyle McDonald, who said he built it to show that music gives people with drastically different lives some common ground.

“I’ve heard estimates that half a million people are in airplanes at any moment, forming a sort of city in the sky,” McDonald said in a statement. “Maybe Serendipity shows a similar sort of never-ending worldwide music festival. I hope that when people watch it they feel something that reminds them of listening to music with friends and that they think about what music can do to connect people.”

Serendipity is definitely one of the more interesting novelty music features I’ve seen come out. Let us know what you think of it in the comments.