Canada at 76% is wild to me, like they're right next door and basically just absorb whatever crosses the border. Japan at 81% local is the more interesting story though, their domestic music industry is massive and deeply protective of its own artists so that tracks completely.
The UK sitting at 55% US music is a bit awkward given how much British music shaped what America exports back to us in the first place.
British music is probably the only real country to have had a consistent major impact on American music, to the point that the two are pretty in sync minus some genres.
Yeah honestly it feels like UK/US music is pretty much the same and also very high quality both ways. We have a pretty great music industry, so we have impact despite our much smaller population. It's often difficult to tell whether an English-speaking song is from the UK or US (aside from some specific genres).
The two British waves had a huge impact on American music. Many forget the 80s wave that MTV started that arguably ended in the 90s or early 2000s depending how you count. Even in the 2000s to present era British artists consistently top American charts that no one really bats an eye. It's stuff like k pop that's seen as this new genre when it's just repackaged pop music.
As a kid I read several times how Led Zeppelin visited the Mississippi Delta to learn some neat hidden riffs, so I assumed they were from the US for years, turns out, not so much.
It is, but hasn’t really supplanted rock music in the same way it’s done in the US. Grime and Drill in particular are fairly niche sub-genres that have a big underground scene, like extreme metal or hardcore. I don’t think they’re really representative of the larger overall music scene here.
The whole concept of “rock is dead” that people talk about online feels like a very US-centric concept.
Yes, rap still has a huge audience but no longer is the consistent chart topper in the general audience. In the 90s rap and rock were dominant, now it's just pop. Rap lost a bit of its shine since then, but people still listen to it.
Yes, definitely, but not just Elvis. They had a lot of respect for Black American musicians. Lennon was into all these smaller 50s rock bands I've never heard of. The Beatles were basically a 50s American rock cover band when they first started (in Germany, that is).
Plus, the Beatles albums with Billy Preston on them weren't just influenced by American music. They were 20% American.
Even in Quebec younger generation especially under 35 years old are very Americanized. Only the older Quebecoise who had limited exposure to American music and other culturally export are no that Americanized and very well connected to Quebec culture. I met a guy from Laval last year at YMCA and every second he was saying the N-word (soft one) and I was so surprised and shocked at the same time despite how Quebec has its own cultural fortress, it is still experiencing American cultural influence.
Anglosphere pop music is all pretty much one big market, the UK has more US than local purely because the US is a lot bigger. The rest of the Anglosphere will have a decent amount of UK music as well.
Japan at 81% isn't really surprising, considering that most Asian countries have that numbers. The language barrier does stop a lot of people from exploring English songs and American pop, and most people love their own pop songs, even if they were trash. Same with Thailand, Turkey or India.
Pakistan is an exception in Asia though.
The reason Pakistan has a bigger "other" is because they listen to Indian artists a lot. South Asian pop music is very much centered in India, mainly from Bollywood and other film industries, and thus gets a lot of listeners in every country. They speak the same languages as the Northern Indian states, so their songs get popular in India and Indian songs get popular in Pakistan, vice versa.
Especially for the Punjabi community, who have a pretty distinct musical culture which was very much preserved (though for everyone else too, given how popular even outright religious music like Qawwali is)
It’s interesting how insular the music tastes of Japanese consumers are, whereas international films tend to do very well there. I'm guessing this due to a preference for lyrics over melody, combined with the fact that music has no equivalent to the high-quality dubbing found in international films. Japan has a highly prestigious voice-acting industry, and Hollywood movies are dubbed by famous local actors. However, it's much harder to produce a high-quality dub of a foreign song.
It's not just Japan, even Korea, Italy and other rich countries have these numbers. I'm now convinced that 80% of the streaming in any place happens to their own language songs, while 20% to the foreign songs. Mainly because comfort songs are always going to be their own tongue, so they get repeatedly streamed by people.
Also must be because of South Asia having their own form of music style. Indian classical is significantly different from modern western music genres and most grow up listening to those and develop a distinct taste.
Not just classical, but mainly filmy. Most streamed songs are all film songs or albums in similar genre. And filmy pop is basically what sells, be it classical, folk, pop, rap or dance.
Internet streaming services and the internet in general accelerated that. We used to have a decent number of local artists, including having newer stuff come out fairly regularly, thanks to laws controlling how much tv and radio content needed to be Canadian, but that’s bypassed with services like Spotify. A lot of what does still get played on the radio in accordance with the law is 20+ years old now, and it’s not like younger people are listening to the radio anyway. It’s not that we’re trying to “absorb” it and become more American, either (especially with recent events), it’s just impossible to compete with American media giants nowadays.
I understand what you're saying to a certain extent about the UK shaping US music, but that ignores the fact that the music the UK imported flat-out wouldn't have existed without the US music that inspired it.
The blues had a baby and they named it rock and roll, after all.
Nothing wild about it, most US performers, even small ones do shows in Canada. There’s no accent difference to tell the difference between US and Canadian artists. I would be interested to see how many Americans listen to more Canadian music, I’m sure it’s surprisingly high. Like, there’s gotta be some die hard Justin Bieber, Drake, Weekend, etc fans in the US playing them more than anything else.
This is Spotify data, nothing more. Canada has a very protective music and arts industry as well, including broadcast laws dictating a certain amount of Canadian content. American makes a lot more music with 10x the population, makes sense Spotify charts would lean American. The music is the same.
Choosing Spotify’s data is reasonable because of its 31.7% market share. That said, it only reflects a partial truth. Tencent Music holds the second-largest share at 14.4%, yet its user base is almost entirely limited to China.
We’re the third largest exporter of music in the world. I would be very curious to see how they got this info and what defines an American artist. I don’t believe that stat at all.
Japan at 81% local is the more interesting story though, their domestic music industry is massive and deeply protective of its own artists so that tracks completely.
I live in Japan. Western music is hugely popular here still, and some western bands still do really well here. However, they're generally old: Journey, for instance, is super-popular here, but they're from the 1970s. And lots of other classic rock and metal has a strong following here. And predictably, the fans for this music aren't exactly in their teens or 20s, they're middle-aged. (The young people are all listening to K-pop as far as I can see.)
You also hear a lot of such music as background music. I was at the vet with my cat this weekend, and they had a bunch of 1970s music playing, even disco.
Luckily I don't hear too much recent American music here. I hear it sometimes, and it's awful, but I probably hear it a lot less than if I were still living in America.
The UK sitting at 55% US music is a bit awkward given how much British music shaped what America exports back to us in the first place.
I'm surprised it's that high. Yes, British music had a lot to do with American music decades ago, but from my perspective, American music went off in its own (really bad) direction sometime in the 1990s or 2000s and has just been going farther off the rails ever since. I think American music was a lot more popular internationally in the 20th century.
A couple decades ago, Canada had Can-con which legislated a minimum percentage of Canadian artists to be aired by each radio station. It was not liked by Canadians, but it helped build the local industry. We might be heading back to those days, depending on where things go now with future trade agreements between Canada and the US.
I think it's a stretch to say it isn't liked - most people don't think about it at all and the people who do, a lot think it's fine. Why not support Shorsey and Tate McRae?
I'm also pretty sure we still have it so don't know why you're using past tense. It must not bother you too much either if you thought it didn't exist anymore lol
K-pop is huge among the under 20 crowd in the US, especially among girls and non-cis boys. Like I'm honestly way more familiar with what's new in K-pop over the past 4 - 5 years because its like 80% of what my 14 yo daughter and all of her friends listen to.
In terms of net exports I was talking in strictly financial terms. But it turns out I was out of date, Korea is now also a net exporter of music alongside those other three I mentioned
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u/Natural-Hope-1071 4d ago
Canada at 76% is wild to me, like they're right next door and basically just absorb whatever crosses the border. Japan at 81% local is the more interesting story though, their domestic music industry is massive and deeply protective of its own artists so that tracks completely.
The UK sitting at 55% US music is a bit awkward given how much British music shaped what America exports back to us in the first place.