Music is one of the greatest cultural common denominators. Nothing unites people from different backgrounds more than music, and at medimops (a subsidiary of momox GmbH), we witness this everyday through the community of music-lovers that buy and sell albums through our platforms. And while certain languages and genres have dominated the musical landscape more than others, the exchange of music between countries and cultures continues to have an enormous influence on what we listen to today. As an online shop for music lovers, we wanted to dig a little deeper into this topic and use a data-driven approach to determine which country has the most musical influence worldwide.
To conduct this study we first needed to understand how musical influence has shifted and evolved throughout the decades. Naturally the advent of European classical music continues to hold the greatest influence over music to this day. However, it was only when music in other continents like the Americas incorporated African beats and European melodies into a cultural melting pot of local and global sounds, that the concept of what we perceive as modern music really began to take shape. Musical exchange rapidly increased in the 20th century due to technological advancements such as the invention of the radio, the television and most recently the internet, which has allowed sounds and genres to transcend location and reach audiences in the most far-flung areas of the globe.
Given this historical convergence of local and global sounds, determining musical influence is not an easy task. However, modern streaming services have made it possible to measure it in more concrete ways than ever before. Having access to this data, nevertheless, is not enough to determine influence, so we needed to find out not only where the most popular artists in the world originated, but also where, how far, and how much their music was being listened to outside their country of birth.
Once we were able to identify the most played acts worldwide, we used algorithms with a scoring system to determine their popularity in other countries across several music platforms*. Next, we collected the number of globally renowned artists that originated in each country, reaching all the way from classical musicians like Bach, to modern day artists like Beyoncé. To add further historical context, we consulted an ethnomusicological study on the uniqueness of local sounds, identifying how distinct each country’s traditional and folk music styles were from others.
It was also important to understand the extent to which each country supported the development of a local music industry as a measure of the symbiotic relationship between their artists and institutions. We did this by analysing each country’s musical infrastructure, ranging from the number of music schools and major labels, to the percentage of people working in the music industry. To determine local demand and support for live music, we investigated how popular that country was as a destination for major artist tours / concerts over the last five years.
Finally, to also determine which type of music is produced most in each country, we measured the musical output based on four different genres – pop, electronic, rock, and classical. By combining these indicators of historical development, global music reach and local artist support, we were able to calculate the first-ever Global Influential Music Index, which uses data to showcase the worldwide influence of each country’s musical output.
Asking which country has had the most influence on music is no doubt an extremely subjective question. Modern music wouldn’t exist without classical Germanic composers like Mozart and Bach, however they could not have created the music they did without instrumentation adopted from other important cultures and countries. Each country has its own unique classical traditions as well, like India’s Carnatic and Hindustani music, or China’s Yayue and literati styles, which all have had some impact on the music we hear today.
Knowing this, we decided to focus on the result of all this incredible musical exchange by evaluating the status of a country’s influence in the modern musical landscape. While the results show that the US is by far the most influential musical country today, we can see that other nations are beginning to close the gap. The debate as to who influenced whom will of course continue, however there is no doubt that the digital age has made the exchange of sounds happen faster than ever before, and we look forward to seeing which countries will shape the musical landscape of the future.
All Inclusive
Luksusowy kwartalnik turystyczno-podróżniczy. Od 2004 roku opisujemy miejsca, do których warto lecieć dłużej niż na weekend, i ludzi, którzy je prowadzą.
