This Awesome Map Shows The Most Liked Pop Music Star In Every State

Music offers us so much. It distracts us from the dreary or depressing in our lives. It tells us rich stories. It takes us to imaginary lands. Every day, we look up to the best music makers we hear on the radio.
But which musical artists mean the most to us?
To find out, the Movoto Real Estate Blog went to that beacon of opinion, the one that gives a voice to countless millions. Of course, we’re talking about Facebook. (Okay, it’s not countless millions. According to Facebook’s own stats, it had 864 million daily active users as of September 2014.)

How We Created This Ranking

To come up with our totally unscientific survey winners, we started with grabbing the top five from the Top 100 Artists of 2014 chart created by music-industry authority, Billboard.
After that, we went to Facebook and got a count of how many users age 18 and over live in each of the 50 states—what we deem each state’s “FB population.”
Then we tallied the Facebook Likes for those five artists. By dividing each artist’s Likes in a state by its FB population, we determined a state-by-state percentage of how big a fan base each musician.
Without further ado, here’s the list:

1. Taylor Swift

Tay-Tay topped our list of most-liked pop musicians, racking up a dominating 36 states in which she was the ahead of everyone else, as well as five states where she tied for the top spot.
Her biggest win was in North Dakota, where she earned Likes from 12.86 percent of Facebook users, but throughout the whole U.S. it’s clearly a love story for her fans, as she averaged 10.72 percent Likes across all 50 states.
While it seems everyone loves Ms. Swift, her weakest state was New Jersey, where she only managed to ring up an 8.52 percent score.

2. Katy Perry

Going into this five-horse race, Katy Perry may have been the dark horse to win, but that didn’t stop her from coming in second overall, beating out everyone else in four states and tying for first with Taylor Swift in five more. (Facebook rounds its numbers off, which can make it harder to come up with clear winners in some cases.)
Her average Likes-to-population across the 50 states was a respectable 9.9 percent, and her biggest win was Texas with 11.32 percent. Still, with her “Prism” album being over a year old, we should count on her to come back stronger in 2015… like, with a roar.
Ms. Perry’s lowest state result was in Vermont with an 8.24 percent.

3. Beyoncé

Queen Bey took the No. 3 spot, winning five states: Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and her current home state of New York.
As for the numbers, she accumulated an average Likes-to-population ratio of 8.21 percent across all states, and a top score of 11.67 percent in Louisiana. Down in the bayou, they don’t just like her… they’re drunk in love with her.
Uh-oh… as with Katy Perry, it looks like Vermont isn’t a big fan of Beyoncé, providing her lowest score of 5.88 percent.

4. Justin Timberlake

JT was actually quite competitive in our findings, achieving a 7.12 percent average across the 50 states with a peak of 9.05 percent in Mississippi. That is absolutely not a bad thing.
As with Katy Perry and Beyoncé, Vermont accounted for JT’s poorest showing with a 5.18 percent being his lowest score across the 50 states.

5. One Direction

1D is still a fairly new act in the States, which is probably the reason the band only got up to the fifth slot in our survey. It’s still establishing its fan base in the U.S., and it averaged a Likes-to-population score of 2.94 percent across all 50 states.
Breaking it down, Nevada offered the band their best state result with a 3.64 percent. Oh, and big surprise… on the other side of the country, Vermont was its weakest state with 2.35 percent. (With four of the five artists here tanking in Vermont, could it be that the Green Mountain State is the real-life setting of “Footloose”?)
There’s still plenty of time for 1D to raise their numbers—provided its band members don’t start feuding in the near future over song choices or girls.

Taylor Can Say, “You Belong To Me!”

It was a spirited competition, but the other artists will just have to shake it off until next year, because Taylor gets to take the victory lap. Hopefully, she has a blank space on her award shelf where she can put this coveted trophy.
(Seriously, we didn’t make an actual trophy for this, but if you really want one, Taylor, let us know and we’ll hook you up.)
The best part of this is, every year there are fresh music releases, by existing artists as well as new acts who land in the public eye. Maybe next year we’ll be tallying the Likes for newly established stars such as Iggy Azalea or Charli XCX. Hey, wouldn’t that be fancy?