Spotify Wrapped thinks LGBTQ+ users belong in Berkeley, Burlington & Cambridge

Forget New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and every other every other well-documented LGBTQ+ enclave. According to Spotify Wrapped, the U.S. cities with the queerest musical taste are Berkeley, Burlington, and Cambridge.

This week, the music streaming platform launched the 2023 edition of its annual viral marketing campaign. It tallies up data on users’ listening habits for the previous year and repackages it all in flashy, social media-ready graphics. And a new feature introduced this year is getting a lot of attention.

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“Sound Town” shows users a city in which other people supposedly share their taste in music, and according to The New York Times, listeners have been “baffled and entertained” by the seemingly random cities they’ve been assigned.

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LGBTQ+ users have been particularly amused. According to Them, queer music fans have taken to social media to report being disproportionately assigned to Berkeley, California; Burlington, Vermont; and Cambridge, Massachusetts—cities that aren’t especially known as LGBTQ+ meccas.

“spotify wrapped said you F****TS need to move to berkeley [sic],” one user posted on X.

“Spotify is trying to make a gay commune in Berkeley, a lesbian commune in Burlington, and a bisexual commune in Cambridge,” another joked.

A Spotify spokesperson told the Times that a disproportionately high number (0.6%) of the platform’s 574 million users were shown Burlington as their “Sound Town.”

“I know a lot of the artists that we’ve been identified with are artists who identify as queer,” John Flanagan, a spokesperson for Burlington City Arts, told the paper. “So a lot of people who listen to those artists are aligning with Burlingtonian values. And I think that’s spot on. And we really do pride ourselves on inclusivity and exquisite taste.”