Australians have a proud tradition of being ‘true blue’; supporting anything and everything that’s ‘made in Australia’, and even co-opting a few things here and there from our New Zealand brethren (Neil Finn anyone?) in the name of some additional national pride.
But even as Aussies beam at the international success of the likes of Gotye, Tame Impala, and more recently Jagwar Ma and Seth Sentry, there remains the concern that Australia – along with the rest of the western world – is arguably becoming more ‘Americanised’. One need only look at the case of Aussie radio, where despite an enforcement of a 25% quota of Aussie material, just 14 of the Top 100 most played songs on Aussie radio in 2012 were Australian artists.
An international invasion of US and UK pop stars is nothing new, but as globalisation has increased rapidly in recent years and the digital music revolution through iPods and Spotify makes it easier to access music any time, anywhere, is there a genuine worry to international music shouldering out the growth and development of local music?
It’s a question that’s posed by a new research study that asks “Has Half a Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?” With a rather definitive answer, ‘not really’, as The Guardian reports.
Following on from the study that found that Aussies like to listen to music to show off, this latest research, published in The Economic Journal, surprisingly concludes that there is a bias amongst music fans towards music from their own country, meaning Aussies tend to listen to Aussie music above other countries’ music.
Researchers Fernando Ferreira and Joel Waldfogel’s study – entitled Pop Nationalism – finds that despite the popular belief that the internet, MTV, and streaming services has everyone singing the same globally popular tunes, their results argue that consumers tend to prefer homegrown music to imported content, and even then they tend towards music from countries that are geographically close and share a similar language. “Contrary to growing fears about large-country dominance, our [research] estimates show a substantial bias towards domestic music that has, perhaps surprisingly, increased in the past decade.”
More surprisingly, Ferreira and Waldfogel’s results found that this trend to listen to homegrown content has actually increased since the turn of the millennium.
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The study looked at music charts and other data from 22 countries from 1960 onwards and concluded that in each case, a country’s market share in music is roughly the same as its market share in global output, making for a balance between the music that’s coming in to what’s being shipped out. Additionally, despite the advances in technology and the many changes in music in that half-century, the effects of distance and language have meant for consistent results in that 40 years.
“This article provides stylised facts about global music consumption and trade since 1960 using a unique data on popular music charts corresponding to over 98% of the global music market,” reads the report. “Contrary to growing fears about large-country dominance, our gravity estimates show a substantial bias towards domestic music that has, perhaps surprisingly, increased in the past decade.”
Their analysis of data from over a million chart entries from 2001 to 2007 shows that the US’s dominance is not disproportionately large compared to the rest of the world. “Fears of cultural globalisation in which American products dominate the market seem to be misplaced, at least for the pop music business,” notes the Economic Journal.
If anything, Aussies tendency towards staying ‘true blue’ might have actually increased as a result of the internet and music TV channels like MTV, the researchers arguing that they boost the spread of local music more than they do the availability of imports like US pop stars and UK rock bands. “Moreover,” the study adds, “we find no evidence that new communications channels reduce the consumption of domestic music.”
Some other interesting details that come from the report include the fact that in 1978, the success of the Bee Gees mean that they accounted for 73% of Australia’s worldwide music sales that year. Also, Kylie Minogue appears among an exclusive list of 31 artists that have appeared simultaneously on at least 18 countries charts in at least one year. Specifically in 2001 and 2002, where ‘our Kylie’ stormed global charts with ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and other singles from her Fever album.
The research shows that, additionally, the top three countries where Australian “music’s share in the markets… makes up the largest share of imports,” (re: where it exports to) is, in order, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada.
Australian music makes up 4% of imports in New Zealand but less than 3% in the UK and Canada. Interestingly the reverse is true in most cases, where US repertoire makes up over 80% of imports in Canada (the most) and Australia (a close second), part of over 40% in 16 of 22 countries, including Brazil, Japan, and large parts of Europe.
