Someone found the real Spotify accounts of famous politicians, journalists, and media/tech figures and scraped their listening data for more than a year. They’ve published some of the data online as the Panama Playlists.

The Panama Papers revealed hidden bank accounts. This reveals hidden tastes.

Scroll in wonder and/or horror!

File this one away as another excellent example of culture surveillance, which I’d argue would make for an excellent entry in an updated addition of the New Liberal Arts.

One of my favorite albums from last year was Mk.gee’s Two Star and the Dream Police, so I was delighted to recently discover this collaboration between Mk.gee and another artist I like called Dijon. If the electricity of their creative partnership in this video doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.

Riley Walz hid a solar powered Android phone in the Mission and set it to run Shazam all day, every day. The result is Bop Spotter, a site listing all of the songs that have been detected.

This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it’s not about catching criminals. It’s about catching vibes. A constant feed of what’s popping off in real-time.

Culture Surveillance is a newsletter to which I would happily subscribe.