National Popular Culture in an Interconnected World: The Case of Pop Charts

Music charts have long been a potent symbol of the relationship between the music industry, artists and consumers (Hakanen 1998). Since the first appearance of the Billboard’s ‘Music Popularity Chart’ in July 1940 (Sassoon 2006), many radio stations and magazines across the world have rapidly followed suit. Our study takes pop charts as a vantage point to study the changing trends in the production and consumption of popular music over the last 50 years with special attention to the role of media. It allows us to gain insights into processes of cultural globalization and cultural diversity more generally, and to explore the interconnectedness of national and global markets for and audience responses to cultural products such as pop songs more specifically.

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