Which Countries Listen to Local Artists?

A study using Spotify data from 73 countries shows that many Asian nations are into listening to local artists. In India, more than 85 percent of the top 200 songs on Spotify observed between May 2024 and July 2025 were from Indian artists – the highest share in the survey.

Vietnam scored an equally high 83.1 percent and rank 3, while in Japan, 81 percent of the top 200 songs were performed by local artists (rank 5). South Korea, known for its K-Pop genre now popular all over the globe, "only" comes in seventh at 77.4 percent. Among the 10 countries which love local music the most, four hailed from Asia, two from the Near East, two from the Americas and two from Europe.

On the latter continent, Italians and Finns were tuning into local artists a lot. While in some European countries, local artists are often performing in English, in most areas of the world local artists still mean local languages in most instances.

Apart from Europe, where many nations consume large amounts of English-language music, nations with widespread languages were least likely to listen locally. This is true especially for small Latin American nations, which tend to consume Spanish music from other countries as well as for Arab-speaking and also English-speaking nations.

Pop-cultural powerhouse the United States is the exception with almost 78 percent local music consumed, while Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland only showed local artist listening in the single percentage digits. However, there are also some places in Asia relying heavily on international music, for example Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan, which love to put on U.S. and Korean songs.