What Spotify data show about the decline of English

 BAD BUNNY may not be a household name in the English-speaking world. Yet the Puerto Rican rapper, whose verses are usually in Spanish (and, on one occasion, Japanese), was the most played artist in 2020 and 2021 for listeners on Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming platform. Such success might have been harder to achieve 30 years ago when English was dominant. In the new digital era, it is becoming ever more common.

To investigate the evolution of music tastes across the world, The Economist trawled through the top 100 tracks in 70 countries according to Spotify. Examining 13,000 hits in 70 languages along with other data like genre, lyrical language and nationality of artist, we sought to group countries according to musical similarity.
On these 320,000 records, we employed a principal-components analysis to assess the degree of musical kinship between countries, and then a clustering algorithm (known as k-means) to group them. Three broad clusters emerged: a contingent in which English is dominant; a Spanish-language ecosystem; and a third group that mostly enjoys local songs in various tongues. Across all, one trend emerged: the hegemony of English is in decline.

Similarity of music streamed on Spotify*

Least similar

Most similar

United States

New Zealand

Saudi Arabia

South Africa

South Korea

Switzerland

Hong Kong

Guatemala

Czech Rep.

Philippines

Costa Rica

Singapore

Honduras

Argentina

Indonesia

Colombia

Denmark

Germany

Paraguay

Australia

Thailand

Morocco

Uruguay

Malaysia

Vietnam

Portugal

Belgium

Ecuador

Panama

Sweden

Norway

Canada

Austria

Greece

Mexico

Taiwan

Ireland

Poland

Bolivia

Britain

Turkey

France

Russia

Egypt

Brazil

Japan

Spain

Israel

Chile

India

Peru

Italy

Australia

Austria

Belgium

Britain

Canada

Czech Rep.

Denmark

Ireland

Malaysia

New Zealand

Norway

Philippines

Portugal

Saudi Arabia

Singapore

South Africa

Switzerland

United States

Brazil

↑ Countries within the

English-language group

have similar tastes

Egypt

France

Germany

Greece

Hong Kong

India

Indonesia

Israel

Italy

Japan

Morocco

Poland

Russia

South Korea

← The local-language group is

the most diverse. Many countries

here have a strong indigenous

music culture

Sweden

Taiwan

Thailand

Turkey

Vietnam

Argentina

Bolivia

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Ecuador

Guatemala

Honduras

Mexico

← The Spanish-language group

has little in common with other

countries, but music taste here is

very homogenous

Panama

Paraguay

Peru

Spain

Uruguay

*From a model comparing top tracks, artists, genres and languages between January 1st-November 12th 2021
The drop over the past five years is mostly concentrated outside the English sphere. Within the Spanish cluster, English quickly lost ground—from 25% of hits to 14%—as native artists like Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro became internationally ascendant. Among the local-language cluster, in countries with strong, indigenous music cultures—like Brazil, France and Japan—English declined even more precipitously, dropping from 52% of hit songs to just 30%. Only in the English cluster did the language remain unfazed, dropping only slightly from 92% to 90%.
There is no doubt that, despite its decline, English is still king. Of the 50 most-streamed tracks on Spotify over the past five years, 47 were in English. And the genres it incubated are being widely adopted elsewhere. There is now excellent rap available in Arabic, Russian and, of course, Spanish. A sign of the momentum in global-music tastes comes from a collaboration in 2018 between two superstars—Bad Bunny and Drake, the self-proclaimed king of rap in English. On that occasion, Drake delivered the chorus in Spanish.
Songs jump musical cultures more often than before. Modern drivers like social media are to blame. To demonstrate this, we plotted the most-streamed song for countries in each group weekly for the full five-year period, revealing precisely when and where these leaps happen.
Luis Fonsi (featuring Daddy Yankee) | “Despacito”
Crossovers can be engineered. “Despacito”, a huge hit in the Spanish-language ecosystem for Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee in the early months of 2017, ascended to the top spot in 36 countries elsewhere thanks to a remix featuring Justin Bieber, the Canadian pop sensation.

English-language group

Local-language group

Spanish-language group

2017

Original

Remix
Mariah Carey | “All I Want for Christmas is You”
Christmas is big business in the streaming charts. For that reason, Mariah Carey returns to the most-streamed lists seasonally on the strength of her modern-day Christmas classic. She takes the top spot in 24 countries in the English-language group, and manages to make incursions into the local-language group, for example in Germany.

English-language group

Local-language group

Spanish-language group

2020

Germany

Britain
BTS (featuring Halsey) | “Boy With Luv”
Many of the K-pop bands popular in South Korea manage to achieve global success by mixing in some English. Some simply mix in English words amid their Korean crooning. Others choose an English title. And some do entire songs in English. None has managed the transition as deftly as the boy band BTS, epitomised by their international hit “Boy With Luv” done with the American songwriter Halsey.

English-language group

Local-language group

Spanish-language group

2019

Vietnam

Malaysia
We have designed an interactive matrix showcasing the most-streamed song on Spotify in 70 countries every week from December 2016 to the first week of 2022. These range from global blockbuster hits like Ed Sheeran’s exceedingly saccharine and exceedingly catchy “Shape of You” to niche sensations in Japan and Iceland. Hover to reveal the song and its language, and see how far its popularity spread. Click to listen to snippets of every song and explore musical tastes around the world—from Polish rap to Brazilian pop.