The Economist - USA (2022-01-29)

2017 2021

0

25

50

75

100

Spanish-languagegroup

Spanish

2017 2021

0

25

50

75

100

Local-languagegroup

Other

2017 2021

0

25

50

75

100

English-languagegroup

English

UruguaySpainPeruPa ra g u ayPanamaMexicoHondurasGuatemalaEcuadorCosta

Rica

ColombiaChileBoliviaArgentinaVietnamTu r ke yThailandTaiwanSwedenSouth

Korea

RussiaPolandMoroccoJapanItalyIsraelIndonesiaIndiaHong

Kong

GreeceGermanyFranceEgyptBrazilUnited

States

SwitzerlandSouth

Africa

SingaporeSaudi

Arabia

PortugalPhilippinesNorwayNew

Zealand

MalaysiaIrelandDenmarkCzech

Rep.

CanadaBritainBelgiumAustriaAustralia

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Britain

Canada

CzechRep.

Denmark

Ireland

Malaysia

NewZealand

Norway

Philippines

Portugal

SaudiArabia

Singapore

SouthAfrica

Switzerland

UnitedStates

Brazil

Egypt

France

Germany

Greece

HongKong

India

Indonesia

Israel

Italy

Japan

Morocco

Poland

Russia

SouthKorea

Sweden

Ta i w a n

Thailand

Tu r ke y

Vietnam

Argentina

Bolivia

Chile

Colombia

CostaRica

Ecuador

Guatemala

Honduras

Mexico

Pa n a m a

Pa ra g u ay

Peru

Spain

Uruguay

↑Countrieswithin the

English-languagegroup

havesimilartastes

←Thelocal-languagegroupis

themostdiverse.Manycountries

herehavea strongindigenous

musicculture

←TheSpanish-languagegroup

haslittleincommonwithother

countries,butmusictastehereis

veryhomogenous

Leastsimilar Most similar

→ Our analysis of global music habits finds three broad clusters of countries. Popular English songs lost ground in all

Song language, % of total Similarity of music streamed on Spotify†

Among weekly top 100 songs*

*To November 1th 01 †From a model comparing top artists, genres, languages and tracks in 01*

Sources: Genius; Google Translate; Musixmatch; Popnable; Soundcharts; Spotify; The Economist

Singing in tongues

B

ad bunny may not be a household

name in the English-speaking world.

Yet the Puerto Rican rapper, whose verses

are usually in Spanish (and, on one occa-

sion, Japanese), was the most played artist

in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify,

the world’s largest music-streaming plat-

form. Such success might have been harder

to achieve 30 years ago when English was

dominant. In the new digital era, it is be-

coming ever more common.

To investigate the evolution of music

tastes across the world, The Economist

trawled through the top 100 tracks in 70

countries according to Spotify. Examining

13,000 hits in 70 languages along with oth-

er data like genre, lyrical language and

nationality of artist, we sought to group

countries according to musical similarity.

On these 320,000 records, we employed

a principal-components analysis to assess

the degree of musical kinship between

countries, and then a clustering algorithm

(known as k-means) to group them. Three

broad clusters emerged: a contingent in

which English is dominant; a Spanish-lan-

guage ecosystem; and a third group that

mostly enjoys local songs in various ton-

gues. Across all, one trend emerged: the

hegemony of English is in decline.

The drop over the past five years is

mostly concentrated outside the English

sphere. Within the Spanish cluster, Eng-

lish quickly lost ground—from 25% of hits

to 14%—as native artists like Bad Bunny

and Rauw Alejandro became internation-

ally ascendant. Among the local-language

cluster, in countries with strong, indige-

nous music cultures—like Brazil, France

and Japan—English declined even more

precipitously, dropping from 52% of hit

songs to just 30%. Only in the English clus-

ter did the language remain unfazed, drop-

ping only slightly from 92% to 90%.

There is no doubt that, despite its de-

cline, English is still king. Of the 50 most-

streamed tracks on Spotify over the past

five years, 47 were in English. And the

genres it incubated are being widely adopt-

ed elsewhere. There is now excellent rap

available in Arabic, Russian and, of course,

Spanish. A sign of the momentum in glo-

bal-music tastes comes from a collabora-

tion in 2018 between two superstars—Bad

Bunny and Drake, the self-proclaimed king

of rap in English. On that occasion,Drake

deliveredthechorusinSpanish.n

The English language’s domination of

streamed music is fading worldwide

The Economist January 29th 2022

Graphic detail Global music tastes

77

Explore the songs in our interactive at

economist.com /global-music