Are there any Canadian bands you "discovered" before they got famous?

Montreal and Toronto are more powerful when it comes to influencing music trends than L.A., New York, Seattle or dozens of other major North American cities according to a new study.

Researchers from Cornell University looked at how taste patterns spread over geographical regions by tracking what people in hundreds of different cities listened to on Last.fm, a popular social music website.

What they found was that, contrary to their initial hypothesis, larger regions have little to no advantage when it comes to setting music trends.

New York and L.A. may be heavy-hitters when it comes to music sales, but "The Geographic Flow of Music" proves Atlanta, Montreal and Oslo are ripe with rising stars and fans in those cities wield major influence on music trends.

To illustrate their key findings, Conrad Lee and Padraig Cunningham put together a series of diagrams ranking North America's largest 20 cities.



Montreal is number one when it comes to indie music, followed closely by Toronto and then Los Angeles.

In the world of Hip-Hop, Toronto is trumped only by Atlanta. Montreal comes in at fourth place after Chicago.

On a chart that combines all music genres, Montreal was ranked as the third most forward-thinking musical city, while Toronto was sixth. Atlanta took the top spot overall.

Vancouver, the only other Canadian city on the list, fell near the bottom of the pack across all three charts but, notably, beat out both Los Angeles and Houston for Hip-Hop music.

With a steady flow of homebred artists like Drake and The Arcade Fire rising to superfame in recent years, many Canadians can count themselves among those who were listening to the "next big thing" before it blew up.

What are musical tastes like in your city? Are there any Canadian artists you were a fan of before they 'made it big?' Let us know in the comments below.