# What was the world listening to?

11 Hacker News commenters recommended What was the world listening to? and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Impressive, cool project charting music in 20 countries from 1940 to 2025. Critics say some country charts seem inaccurate.

## Why people recommend it

- Impressive, cool project overall (3 comments): "Very cool! One small UI grip: When I play a song the control at appears in the bottom of the page blocks the footer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47325668)) "This is amazing! One of the coolest projects I've seen on here tbh" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366539)) "Overall, really impressive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367895))

## What people warn about

- Years locked to five-year intervals (2 comments): "I wish the years weren't locked to 5 year intervals." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364899)) "you can skip destinations only by 5 years :(" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327255))
- Missing countries or no country selection (2 comments): "I found a mistake, clicked the suggest correction button and I couldn't find the country in the list." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366602)) "chart doesn't allow for selection of other countries not already present" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47364469))
- Some charts seem inaccurate (3 comments): "for some country (i'm from Italy) maybe the charts are not so accurate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362945)) "the israeli one has a lot of wrong data as well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374275)) "the songs seem to be wrong" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47366042))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "What was the world listening to?", https://hackerapproved.com/p/what-was-the-world-listening-to/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).