Is it possible for music and geography to intersect in a way that is different than traveling to hear a band play in a town you don’t live in?
Expedia thinks so. Musicians believe that too, which is why there are many great songs about places you’ve never heard of before, travels taken by a songwriting story-teller that are shared with notes and music for new adventures to be had.
Welcome to the World Of Music, a new online game by Expedia the online travel-booking company. Their interest in travel extends beyond booking a 4 day vacation complete with flight, hotel and rental car. They want to unite people through an interactive game experience that builds new interest in music and helps to spread your palette of music discovery a step further.
Game play is simple. In an Amazing-Race style format, you race against the clock to try and pinpoint the geographic location of bands who have names based on locations. The names of the bands and where they are from are often different. To guide you, you get to listen to a track from the band to help aid in your hunt for their place of origin.
Overall the game is enjoyable and I did learn about some new bands and got to hear some good music. I learned that bands with names after American cities and states (like Texas) are actually from Europe, and vice versa.
However, the integration of GoogleMaps with the formatting of the game made zooming in on locations difficult, and at times caused the play to be cumbersome. Which makes scoring difficult because you get more points the closer you are to clicking on a location (scores are based on km from the actual origin of the band and where you click on the map). My advice is to not use the zoom tool but instead try to target the continents or regions where you think the artist/band might be from and go from there.
Good luck!