“Twenty years ago, the German charts were just a carbon copy of British and American culture. Today, they’re all German acts.”
This week on the MBW Podcast, Will Page, the ex-Chief Economist of both Spotify and UK collection society PRS For Music spoke about the ‘Glocalization’ of music, a concept outlined in a paper he co-authored and published by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
‘Glocalization’ is centered around the theory that as an industry, music is more global than ever, but when you zoom in on many individual markets around the world, their most-popular artists and charting tracks are becoming increasingly localized.
One of the best examples offered by Page to illustrate this concept is that in Poland, “the Top 10 [acts there today] are Polish, the Top 40 is pretty much all Polish – but they’re Polish acts doing hip-hop, which is an American genre”.
Page adds: “So we’ve seen the localization of the [artists], but the globalization of the genre itself.”
Local charts dominated by local acts is a trend we’ve pointed to before. Italy is a great example, where the Top 10 singles and Top 10 albums chart have been dominated by Italian-language music.
The shift to local-language music dominance in local markets is all broader context to news that arrived this week in Luminate’s new mid-year music report:
English language music is becoming statistically less popular on music streaming services in the United States, and globally.
According to Luminate’s mid-year music report, in the United States, in H1, the streaming share of English language content in the Top 10,000 total on-demand (audio and video) tracks was down 4.2% since 2021.
Spanish language music’s streaming share of the Top 10,000 US on-demand (audio and video) tracks, on the other hand, has grown 3.6% in the same time frame.
In the US, English language music’s streaming share of the Top 10,000 US on-demand (audio and video) tracks was 88.3% in H1. Spanish language music had a 7.9% share of the equivalent metric.
English language music’s declining share of the Top 10,000 tracks on streaming services is not just a US trend, but a global one (see below).
According to Luminate, English language music’s share of the Top 10,000 on-demand tracks on streaming services globally in 2022 was 62.1% versus 67.2% in 2021.
In the first half of 2023, English language music’s share of the Top 10,000 total on-demand (audio and video) tracks globally fell to 56.4%.
Luminate points to a similar trend in multiple markets worldwide.
For example, in Portugal, in FY 2021, English-language music’s streaming share of the Top 10,000 total on-demand (audio and video) tracks was 65.3%.
In FY 2022, that figure fell to 55.9% in Portugal, and in the first half of this year, it fell again, to 51.6%.
In South Africa, in FY 2021, English-language music’s streaming share of the Top 10,000 total on-demand (audio and video) tracks was 82.1%. In FY 2022, that figure fell to 77.8% in South Africa, and in the first half of this year, it fell again, to 73%.
Luminate reports that the same trend took place in Indonesia, Colombia and Switzerland.
English language music’s share of the Top 10,000 Total on-demand (audio and video) tracks in each of these markets fell in 2022 versus 2021, and again in H1 2023.Music Business Worldwide
