One beautiful thing about music is its ability to bring people from all over the world together, defying borders, oceans and sometimes time itself. 

So far this year, we’ve had listeners from every country on earth, which is truly amazing. We collectively racked up around 400 million minutes worth of listening last month. To put that into perspective, that’s 761 years of music and talk in just thirty days! 

Each record on Mixcloud is carefully selected by a music fan and heard by a music fan. So 400 million is actually smaller than the collective time and effort DJs put into researching, organising and planning their mixes. Such monumental group efforts do not go unnoticed.

Around the world, around the world

Thanks to the internet, music not only travels easily but it creates communities far from its origin. 

Some music collectives, such as Montreal’s Moonshine, defy borders intentionally. Moonshine are re-shaping dancefloors as ‘special worlds without borders’. They weave together music from all over the African continent with global club music to create nights of unity and respect for the world around them.

Then you can look at the Japanese Reggae scene or the UK Juke scene for examples of thriving communities, built on nothing more than a passion for records that showed up one day, either by a plane or by wires on the seafloor. 

Sometimes, just one Mixcloud profile has the world’s attention. Above & Beyond are a London-based DJ trio that have been uniting international listeners on Mixcloud for 13 years. Their Group Therapy show serves thousands of listeners from hundreds of countries around the world. In fact their most popular mix has been heard at least once in 88% of the world’s countries.  

One of the great powers of electronic music is a universal language that moves people without words. Like poetry for the body, raw grooves and sonic frequencies can hit deep and touch dormant emotions. 

It’s not just electronic music that’s surpassing borders. Incredible selector Taizo Taniguchi from Nishinomiya, Japan, has plenty of fans from Paris and New York thanks to his collection of iconic Soul and Funk records. His regular livestreams have become a staple in the Mixcloud HQ and we really think he deserves more love. He’s playing old American Soul records to European fans when he gets home from work in Japan. 

Elsewhere, what connects Cyprus and Sydney? The fanbase of Gaby Musikera. The consistent queen of Chillwave and Lounge is always topping the charts with her hour long mixes that mix Balearic, Ambient and House for thousands of listeners around the world. 

She’s the perfect ambassador of connecting people through music. Her bio reads: “Let’s enjoy music together, no matter where you’re from, because we will always be united by this passion.”

Hailing from Mendoza, Argentina, Gaby’s mixes are smoother than the wine that flows from her local vineyards. Just head to the comments sections of her mixes to see how much this woman’s work is adored.

Watching people come together through music reminds me of a brilliant quote from our recent podcast episode with Mat Dryhurst. Talking about his own musical journey through the Hardcore Metal scene, he points out an interesting observation that “the strange rules and rituals between people become the most important part. Music’s just kind of an excuse for everything else to happen”.