France, Germany, Netherlands, and US

This post is based on "A Cultural Globalization of Popular Music? American, Dutch, French, and German Popular Music Charts (1965 to 2006)" by Peter Achterberg, Johan Heilbron, Dick Houtman, and Stef Aupers in American Behavioral Scientist 2011 55: 589 by Sage publication. 

This study will be different from other posts because rather than qualitative studies looking at cultures and music, this one is quantitative and actually looks at the amount of international music popular in various countries and if the amount changes over time. This study looks at " . . . consumer appreciation as foreign as compared to national cultural goods" (Achterberg, 590). "Cultural globalization implies that cultural exchange between countries expands and that cultural consumers around the globe increasingly may enjoy foreign cultural goods besides local products" (591). This is seen to most benefit the west and can be viewed as cultural imperialism or glocalization because they not only have worldwide effects, but "local circumstances." Or it could be a process of multiculturalization in which cultures coexist or blend together.

The study looked at the top 10 hits from each year 1965-2006 and noted the nationality of the singer and the language of the song for the U.S., Germany, France, and Netherlands. The most frequent nationality of the U.S. was American artists followed by British and Latin American. No surprise there. France saw a majority of national artists, although less than the U.S. saw. France also saw the lowest number of U.S. and British artists compared to Germany and Netherlands. The latter two saw about an equal number of national, U.S. and British artists. The chart from Achterberg (593) is below:

 There was less variation with the language of hit songs with English dominating with over 70% in every country except France, where it was only at 35.2% and French was more frequently used. The chart for these results can be seen below:

 This chart, not surprisingly, shows that practically all of the songs in the U.S. are in English. Does this show how ethnocentric our country is? Or perhaps it is because of the large geographical and isolated area our country lies in which we do not often have to communicate with people who speak other languages. Germany, France, and the Netherlands are all small countries compared to ours and are surrounded by nations with differing national languages. Most European citizens are fluent in more than their national language and must learn other languages early on in school. I find it interesting that the Netherlands had only 11% of their most popular songs in Dutch while Germany had 21% of their songs in German and France had an overwhelming 57% in French. I went to Amsterdam in December of 2010 and not once encountered a language barrier. Sure, I heard people speaking Dutch, but instantly when I asked them something in English, they could switch back and forth so quickly and answer me in English and go back to their conversation in Dutch. This is a great example of the code switching mentioned in my last post. Also, the Dutch are some of the best English-as-a-second-language speakers I have ever heard. Their accent is hardly even noticeable. As a media communication major, I am most interested in television and in an issue of the Rolling Stone magazine I recently read that the new show "The Voice" is actually based on the Netherlands show "The Voice of Holland." This clip from that show is mind blowing how he can speak perfect Dutch and then sing in perfect English. While he is singing in English, the host talks about him in Dutch. It's another example of code switching and how, according to the chart by Achterberg above, the Dutch prefer music in English. 

What's also interesting is the judge's comments at first up until the 2:50 mark- half are in English and the other half are Dutch and they switch between in the middle of a sentence. It's almost like since the song was in English, they want to speak in English until they are saying long comments much after the song is over, then it is almost all in Dutch. Globalization. Their English is so good too, they almost sound American . . . is this perhaps because the majority of the music they listen to is from America at over 28%? That is something to think about. 

The Achterberg study looked at what songs and the number of songs that were popular in more than one of the four countries at once. From 1965-1976, there were three songs popular in all four countries: Frank Sinatra "Strangers in the Night" from 1966 (American), Jerry Mungo's "In the Summertime" from 1970 (English) and Abba's "Fernando" in 1976 (Swedish). Since this time there hasn't been a huge increase in the number of hits popular in all four countries at once, with the exceptions of Spice Girl's "Wannabe" in 1996 (English) among others. "In the Netherlands and the United States, the share of foreign music has dropped, whereas the two other countries feature neither a decrease or increase. This contradicts assumptions of cultural globalization: The share of nondomestic cultural products does not grow, and natural cultural production does not become less important either" (Achterberg 595). As the chart below from Achterberg shows, the total number of different nationalities of artists in each country has increased, which suggests globalization despite the previous fact that there is no increase of share of foreign music.

Germany is now considering following in France's footsteps with the radio quota system they have in place requiring radio to play at least 40% French artists, as mentioned in the last post. http://www.the-latest.com/calls-for-quota-to-keep-german-music-alive from June 26, 2006 says that "Music industry officials estimate that only 10 percent of German radio's play lists is sung in German, falling way short of France, Italy and Spain's 50 percent native language ratio." Spain also already has the quota in place. There have been protests and everyone seems to like the idea of promoting local artists, but do not feel the need to have it government mandated. Others fear that the quota would help Germany but make it much more difficult for other European music to make waves (and yes that pun is all mine) in Germany. According to http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/mus/en3964832.htm by Goethe-Institut e. V. 2006, Germany has passed a quota law of sorts "In December 2004 the Lower House finally passed a resolution calling for voluntary self-regulation by radio broadcasters: about 35 percent of the pop or rock music broadcast should be either German-language or made-in-Germany, and half of that should be new releases or up-and-coming musicians." This is not a law, but voluntary, which was probably just passed so people would stop complaining. Venezuela also have a radio quota, but that 50% of music on the radio must be Venezuelan. This information is found at http://www.ancient-future.com/radioquotas.html written by Matthew Montfort on July 23, 2005. It seems other unlikely nations are wanted to impose a radio quota, such as Scotland according to Euan McGrory from Edinburgh Evening News on May 5, 2009 from http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Face-the-music-over-radio.5233943.jp. Although he can't legally do this, Scotland's cultural minister Mike Russell saw Canada's quota system in action that forces one third of the music on the radio to be local and wants to convince radio stations in Scotland to volunteer to do the same. The author of this article, McGrory makes a good point saying, shouldn't people get to choose what they listen to and not be forced to listen to local music? Especially in Scotland . . . a place not exactly known for their music. Also, he brings up the point of what would count as local? If someone is born in Scotland but lived most of their life elsewhere, could they count, such as Rod Stewart? Jamaica, Australia, and Israel in addition to the already mentioned France, Spain, Canada, and Venezuela all have similar quota systems. It almost seems like an epidemic to push out American music and ultimately combats globalization. Why make it a law? If there was a need and want for local music, what was wrong with the idea of having one station that only plays local music? That's my question. McGrory says "It seems anachronistic, for a start, to be corralling radio stations in the middle of the biggest technological changes since the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to the internet, there have never been more ways or more powerful ways to promote new bands." This is a good point, and while France passed this law while radio was still a huge form of communication and especially communicating music, there are newer and better forms now and perhaps have more reach and influence than radio. Applying this law now would be counterproductive. 


A website mentioned earlier, this website by Kirsten Kummer on Goethe-Institut e. V. 2006, has a really great video about Germany and recent songs about German pride, using the words "homeland" because they don't feel the same associations with German nationality and pride as there was 70-80 years which came to a horrific end. There seems to be a huge difference and controversy with German people and especially musicians. One German musician says "I don't feel like a German" and nothing about his music is German besides his language and he feels this German pride is unnecessary because none of their music is based on a German tradition. This same musician later says that he's against this radio quota because radio stations have a responsibility to play a cultural variety. He adds, "art is not something to be given quotas" (Kummer). It seems Germans are ashamed of their past and this new German pride music reminds them of this past. Another musician says that the discussion of "what's German? Is exactly what's German about Germans. The country is so divided and the people are so skeptical, but also try so hard" (Kummer). Now with German hip hop bands, more controversy arises when ". . . a minority culture from the U.S.A is being absorbed which is not transferable one to one. All that romanticized ghetto aspect just doesn't work in Germany" (Kummer). I could not find this video on youtube, but I highly recommend going to the link and watching this video. While there is still globalization present here, with Germans adapting and American music style, they are singing in German which previously was not done as much. This German pride revival could be another reason why the Achterberg results showing globalization weren't higher.


Achterberg's results also finds that when national music declined, American music rose until 1989 where national music rose and American music declined. It could be a coincidence that this happened the same time as the end of the Cold War or around the same time as the radio quota system was starting to be put in place in France or the year that I was born. None of those are coincidences though . . . except the last one, that is. This could also be explained by Robin Mansell and Marc Raboy's "The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy” Introduction: Foundations of the Theory and Practice of Global Media and Communication Policy. In Mansell, Robin, and Raboy, Marc (Eds.), The Handbook of Global Media and Communication Policy, pp. 1-20. Blackwell Publishers. [Electronic reserve]. In this article, Mansell says that it was in 1990s that people started thinking not only globally, but locally. Achterberg suggest that this is a form of anti-globalization and more specifically anti-Americanization after 1989 and countries were turning back to their national language and music. This would mean that globalization is not blurring boundaries and creating a blended culture as many fear, but it's because of this fear that nations are reasserting their national and local roots and pride, specifically through music. It seems that globalization was occurring, according to Achterberg's study, until 1989, which is probably when we first started hearing about globalization and as soon as nation's learned that was happening, they made sure their own culture wasn't lost while still holding on to some globalizing aspects.