The digitization of music has changed how we consume, produce, and distribute music. In this paper, we explore the effects of digitization and streaming on the globalization of popular music. While some argue that digitization has led to more diverse cultural markets, others consider that the increasing accessibility to international music would result in a globalized market where a few artists garner all the attention. We tackle this debate by looking at how cross-country diversity in music charts has evolved over 4 years in 39 countries. We analyze two large-scale datasets from Spotify, the most popular streaming platform at the moment, and iTunes, one of the pioneers in digital music distribution. Our analysis reveals an upward trend in music consumption diversity that started in 2017 and spans across platforms. There are now significantly more songs, artists, and record labels populating the top charts than just a few years ago, making national charts more diverse from a global perspective. Furthermore, this process started at the peaks of countries’ charts, where diversity increased at a faster pace than at their bases. We characterize these changes as a process of Cultural Divergence, in which countries are increasingly distinct in terms of the music populating their music charts.

音乐的数字化改变了我们消费、制作和分发音乐的方式。在本文中，我们探讨了数字化和流媒体对流行音乐全球化的影响。虽然有些人认为数字化导致了更加多样化的文化市场，但其他人认为，越来越多的国际音乐可及性将导致全球化市场，少数艺术家将获得所有关注。我们通过研究 4 年来在 39 个国家/地区的音乐排行榜的跨国多样性如何演变来解决这场辩论。我们分析了来自目前最流行的流媒体平台 Spotify 和数字音乐发行先驱之一 iTunes 的两个大规模数据集。我们的分析显示，从 2017 年开始，跨平台的音乐消费多样性呈上升趋势。与几年前相比，现在有更多的歌曲、艺术家和唱片公司登上排行榜，从全球角度来看，国家排行榜更加多样化。此外，这一过程始于国家图表的高峰，那里的多样性增长速度比其基础更快。我们将这些变化描述为一个文化差异的过程，在这个过程中，各国在音乐排行榜上的差异越来越大。