Cultural Divergence in Popular Music: The Increasing Diversity of Music Consumption on Spotify Across Countries

The digitization of music, particularly the rise of streaming services like Spotify, has profoundly altered music consumption, production, and distribution. Digital music's near-zero marginal cost and the flat-fee subscription model of streaming platforms have lowered barriers to music exploration, potentially fostering greater diversity. However, concerns about Cultural Convergence persist, fueled by fears that easier access to international music would lead to the dominance of a few global artists and a homogenization of musical tastes. Existing research offers conflicting evidence, hampered by limited data and inconsistent country samples. This study leverages large-scale datasets from Spotify and iTunes to investigate the evolution of cross-country diversity in music charts, aiming to resolve this debate.

The debate on the effects of digitization on cultural markets centers around two contrasting views. The 'winner-takes-all' perspective emphasizes the scalability of cultural products, leading to concentrated success for a few hits and artists. Conversely, the 'long tail' hypothesis posits that online platforms, unconstrained by physical space, allow for the consumption of a far wider range of niche products, thus increasing overall diversity. More recent work, however, suggests a 'random long tail,' where unpredictable success in cultural markets leads to unexpected hits, boosting overall diversity even beyond the long tail effect. This study builds on these perspectives, offering a larger-scale and more granular analysis to assess the actual trends.

The study employs the Rao-Stirling diversity index and its components (variety, balance, and disparity) to analyze data from Spotify's top 200 charts and iTunes' top 100 charts across 39 countries from 2017 to 2020. Variety measures the number of unique songs, artists, or labels; balance assesses the evenness of their distribution; and disparity captures the acoustic dissimilarity between songs. To address the potential influence of platform-specific factors, the analysis incorporates data from both Spotify and iTunes. The sample is restricted to countries with established Spotify presence to minimize the impact of fluctuating user demographics. Additionally, Zeta diversity, a measure borrowed from biology, is used to analyze the interplay between local and global hits, offering a more nuanced understanding of the success distribution across countries. Multidimensional scaling is used to visualize the distances between countries based on shared songs.

The analysis reveals a consistent upward trend in the diversity of songs, artists, and record labels in music charts across the 39 countries from 2017 to 2020. This trend is observed in both Spotify and iTunes data, supporting the external validity of the findings. Variety increased significantly, indicating a wider range of musical choices in national charts. Balance also improved, suggesting a more even distribution of chart positions across songs, artists, and labels. Disparity showed increased acoustic diversity, especially outside the top 10 charts. While the increase in diversity was more pronounced at the top of the charts, it was present across all chart strata. Zeta diversity analysis reveals that the increase in overall diversity was largely driven by local hits, with truly global hits remaining relatively rare. Multidimensional scaling showed geographical clustering of countries with similar musical tastes, with these clusters becoming more distinct over time.

The findings demonstrate a clear trend of Cultural Divergence, contradicting concerns of increasing globalization and homogenization of popular music. Countries are exhibiting increasingly distinct musical preferences. The observed patterns are not consistent with simple explanations based solely on user preferences. The rapid and widespread nature of these changes suggests a significant role for changes in music production and distribution, consistent with the concept of the 'random long tail'. This implies that reduced barriers to entry have increased the diversity of available music, allowing listeners to express geographically determined preferences, thereby increasing the divergence between national music charts. The increasing diversity of record labels further refutes the idea of major labels producing homogenized global pop music.

This study provides robust evidence of Cultural Divergence in popular music, demonstrating a significant increase in the diversity of songs, artists, and labels in national music charts. This trend, observed across multiple platforms and driven primarily by local hits, counters the expectation of increased global homogeneity and suggests a more complex interplay between technology, production, and cultural expression. Future research could explore the specific factors driving this divergence, such as changes in music production, algorithmic recommendations, or evolving cultural preferences, potentially at a more granular level considering subgenres within specific countries.

The study relies on data from two major streaming platforms, which may not fully represent the overall music consumption patterns of all populations. The focus is on popular music as charted by these platforms, potentially neglecting less commercially successful genres. The time frame (2017-2020) limits the ability to project long-term trends. Finally, the interplay between platforms might introduce some degree of non-independence.