Study finds the American South still favors soul music most

A new study finds soul remains the most-searched music genre in five US states, with R&B leading in two more, according to research analyzing Google search interest across 18 genres in every US state.

The study, conducted by ticket comparison site SeatPick, found soul finishing first in North Carolina, Alabama, Illinois, South Carolina and Virginia, while R&B tops the charts in Georgia and Delaware. North Carolina posted a maximum score of 100 to claim the title of America's soul capital, while Georgia matched that score to lead the country in R&B.

Nationally, Leon Thomas is soul's most-searched artist and Chris Brown leads R&B, both topping 500,000 searches a month. Six of the seven states where either genre placed first sit in the South, forming a near-continuous block along the Atlantic coast and the Deep South, the region where both genres originated; Illinois is the lone outlier, with Chicago's role in soul's history pushing the state's numbers past pop by three points.

The margins were often tight: Virginia decided its soul-versus-R&B question by a single point, the closest of any state or territory in the study, while Delaware, South Carolina and Alabama each settled the question by single-digit margins. SeatPick co-founder Gilad Zilberman said the results should change how tours get booked. "Promoters route tours on assumptions about where a genre belongs, and this data shows those assumptions are decades out of date," he said.

Three more states search heavily for soul without leading the category: Mississippi ranks second nationally at 94, behind gospel; Louisiana ranks fourth at 91, behind jazz; and Maryland ranks tenth at 82, behind hip-hop. The full picture points to a wide R&B and soul belt running from Delaware to Alabama, a map at odds with how many tours still get routed.