Global Soundscape: CitySounds.fm

World Beats: CitySounds.fm

Auditory voyeurism, globe-trotting musicology, and why New York and Brooklyn are different cities altogether.

The city is a living organism with distinct character, taste, smell, sound. Its thriving music scene offers a special kind of storytelling about the city’s personality quirks and cultural passions — an auditory window into the soul of the city.

CitySounds.fm opens a dozen such fascinating windows by delivering the latest music from some of the world’s most interesting cities, from Sydney to Stockholm to San Francisco.

Developed by Swedish digital geek duo Henrik Berggren and David Kjelkerud for London’s Music Hack Day, the project uses professional audio platform SoundCloud’s API to fetch the music and streams it to build an immersive global soundscape.

CitySounds.fm comes on the trails of The Present Sounds of London, an audio tour of the iconic city’s distinct urban onomatopoeias — perhaps a trend towards a newfound fascination with the auditory “brands” of urban epicenters?

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