Most of the Overall Charts albums are from the UK or USA

[Kiki]

It's easy to notice. Out of the top 10,000 albums on the website over 70% are from UK or USA. It's right there in the numbers!

Is this a fact of BEA? Because those two countries have the largest number of users here? Is it worth intentionally finding music not from those two countries? Would you like to see it change at all?

I am fine with it on the overall yet when it comes to albums I have listened to I am trying to increase the amount of albums from different countries than those two. Outside of Canada, UK and USA I have no single country I have listened to more than 100 albums from.

I has help find many great albums so far.

[PsychologistHD]

People like English. What can we do?
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alelsupreme wrote:

i am the obscure music man and when i hear anything thats sold more than 2000 copies i scream wordlessly and painfully until someone changes it.

[Tap]

I mean I don't really care about lyrics so the English thing shouldn't be a factor for me, but I still have a similar sort of bias with what I've really paid attention to. The lyrics thing is probably a huge player in why it's happening generally, but there's probably also the diminished opportunity for listeners and the people writing about music who have the biggest reach not having opportunities to see the artists live, and probably a million other factors.

I like how this site is able to help call attention to those biases, this gives me an idea to maybe try start building up some custom country specific lists. I figure if there's places I haven't been paying attention to then there's a good chance to find a bunch of stuff I like.

[newbands1]

The difficulty in trying to explorer music from other countries is that their titles and information on those usually are in another language,and you'd have to use google translate or rely on some kind of blog that provides info on these artists in English

[Romanelli]

It would be helpful if we could, instead of selecting which single country we want to show, if there was an option to NOT show selected countries. If you could customize the overall chart to exclude albums from the US and the UK...THAT would be interesting!
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May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

[sp4cetiger]

% of albums on BEA from countries other than UK or USA (according to the decade charts):

1950s: 12% (UK is only 1% in the 1950s)
1960s: 16%
1970s: 22%
1980s: 19%
1990s: 20%
2000s: 21%
2010s: 24%

It might be getting better... slowly.

[benpaco]

[latenighttv]

For what it's worth, most “Scandinavian” bands / artists (even the ones that don't make international breakthroughs) sing in English and the same can be said for a lot of artists from the Benelux countries too, I think. Singing in English doesn't just seem to increase these acts' chances of becoming better known in USA, UK etc., but it also increases their chances of enjoying success on European continent (eg, a Norwegian band might have a chance of enjoying success in Germany or Italy if they sing in English but they've no hope of doing that if they perform in Norwegian).

English-speaking countries that aren't US or UK are also littered with hidden gems - for every Arcade Fire, Nick Cave or U2 there're dozens of bands / artists that coulda / shoulda become internationally known.

[Romanelli]

When I was at the age most of you are now, I had no access to most of the music that was made in countries other than the US, Canada, and the UK. It's only recently that this music was made widely available to people in those countries on a large level.

To me, that explains it all.
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May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

[Mercury]