matteocantiello•3d
Show HN: What was the world listening to? Music charts, 20 countries (1940–2025)88mph.fm

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.

31 comments
  • etrvic•31m

    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.

    • matteocantiello•19m

      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

  • dewey•4h

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

  • FuriouslyAdrift•2h

    This has a lot of overlap with Radiooooo

    https://app.radiooooo.com/

  • TrackerFF•2h

    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.

    • matteocantiello•1h

      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

  • DonsDiscountGas•2h

    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

  • user_7832•2h

    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.

    • matteocantiello•1h

      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

  • pilaf•4h

    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

  • primaprashant•2h

    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

    • matteocantiello•2h

      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

  • calebelac•2h

    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!

  • avgDev•2h

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

    Otherwise, very nice project.

  • 4ggr0•1h

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

    nice project :D

  • rubenflamshep•3d

    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?

    • matteocantiello•3d

      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.

  • t23414321•3d

    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 ??

    • Nzen•3h

      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.

      • globular-toast•2h

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

    • woldemariam•5h

      I see Kenya

  • Qc17•5h

    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

  • liviux•4h

    You've got my upvote, nice