Google Maps - Music to Our Ears?

I know that everybody has his/her own selection of favorite tracks and genres of music that he/she rarely steps out of, but have you ever stopped to wonder what people next door are listening to? Well, perhaps not exactly next door, that you can hear with the first opportunity and call the cops about.

Google Maps Mania, an unofficial Google Maps blog that tracks the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps, brings to our attention three such musical "tools" of enlightening yourself. The first, called MappaMusica, virtually takes you into a global musical journey via a Google Maps interface, so that you can explore and discover the most popular music in every country. They get to do this thanks to Last.fm's statistics, and the end result presents the top artists and tracks that are listened to in a particular country. It's true that the statistics can't be all that accurate, for example, I'm personally having a hard time agreeing with the fact that the most listened to track in India is Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".

Led Zeppelin's fans will be glad to know that a mashup of significant places of their favorite band's places has been released, and it includes the actual place where the "Physical Graffiti" album cover was photographed or the recording studio that made them world famous marked on it. "This map has great captions packed with stories, photos and best of all placemarks showing you where these locations are on a Google Map. A little geo with your stairway?"

The third and last for today mashup deals with musical gear search and is a tool that "aggregates US local and national listings from hundreds of sources and brings them to you in one place. Your search results can be mapped and from there each result links off to its original source so you can gather further details to decide on the purchase." The name of it is JamLoop and its range goes from electrical guitars to specific Fender tube amps, just to give an example.

Let the music heal your soul, as a song that I listened to as a kid said. And let Google Maps show you exactly how and where.