Or so one could infer from Last.fm’s amazing stream charts that show, month-by-month, which artists got the most listens in New York and London vs. the world (click the links to download full-size PDFs).

Working with the Newspaper Club, a group that helps people print their own newspapers (how cool is that!?), the folks at the UK-based streaming radio site built these charts using Last.fm’s data set of the most “scrobbled” (flagged by readers, essentially) songs of the year.

Though London and the world found common ground in Britrockers Muse, the charts show unsurprising differences in taste between the discerning listeners in trendy big cities and the hoi polloi of the hinterlands: While the world was jammin’ to mass-appealing Green Day, NYC was digging the experimental sounds of Grizzly Bear. As Paramore took off with the release of Twilight: New Moon, the Big Apple preferred French-popping Phoenix and electro-dancing Passion Pit.

The much-buzzed St. Vincent didn’t even register in the greater realm, while poor, lowly U2 — which released a rather huge album this year and accompanied it with a web-savvy tour — didn’t exist in New York. On Last.fm, at least.

Speaking of which, isn’t it a little surprising that Last.fm listeners the world over appear to subscribe in large part to the very major-label, big-bucks marketing machine that puts megabands like Green Day and Paramore on terrestrial, commercial radio? The same system, in other words, that online radio sites are providing an alternative — and supposedly giving heaps of trouble — to?

Perhaps the majors aren’t as dead as we/they/you thought.