The Diffusion of Music via YouTube: Comparing Asian and European Music Video Charts

• In Event: 023 - Regular Session. Popular Culture: Spaces, Places, and Scenes

Abstract

This research aims to study what role YouTube – arguably the largest and most popular video sharing website in the world -- actually plays in the globalization of pop music. This will be done by analysing YouTube’s music video charts. The first aim is to examine the trends in the degree, direction and diversity of international music videos within YouTube’s national music video charts of Western European and (South-)East Asian countries. These music video charts contain the most popular and most trending music videos of the moment on YouTube within a specific country. The second aim is to understand how national differences between countries’ musical exchange can be explained. We conducted a content analysis of music video charts on YouTube in two regions: Western Europe (6 countries) and South-East Asia (8 countries). Our findings suggest that YouTube to a certain extent stimulates the flow of international music and makes national music markets more internationally orientated. In our multivariate analyses we still find large influences of cultural and geographical distance. Our findings imply that Internet has only to a limited extent closed the gap between cultures from different parts of the world. This seems to accord with the results of Baek (2015) who – analyzing more destination countries, but only one origin country (Korea) – still finds significant effects of cultural distance dimensions for online video consumption.

Authors

• Just Kist, Erassmus University Rotterdam

• Marc Verboord, Erasmus University Rotterdam