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Do preferences for pop music converge across countries? – Empirical evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest

ABSTRACT The combination of the digitalisation of cultural goods and facilitated cross-border availability through the internet fuels a globalisation process that is often said to cause a homogenisation of demand across countries, in particular, for entertainment goods as music and movies. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyse historical voting data of the Eurovision Song Contest, which has taken place annually since 1956, thus covering the timespan (1975–2016) in which digitalisation and Internet availability emerged and evolved into mass phenomena. Consequently, according to the outlined theory of homogenisation of preferences, voting should have become more concentrated on the leading artists and less focused on regional differences in taste during this timespan. For the purpose of detecting concentration trends in the allocation of points, we employ different indicators for measuring concentration. First, we calculate concentration ratios, second, we calculate the Herfindahl-Hirschman-Index, and third, the Gini-coefficient for each year. Furthermore, we test trendlines for statistical significance. The results show that our analysis cannot support the thesis of preference homogenisation. We find no significant trend towards preference convergence. In contrast, some of the employed indicators and methods point towards significant, albeit weak, deconcentration trends in voting behaviour for the contest.