A globally-marketed app flattens local music markets into Western playlists

Evidence

The girls usually select their lip-sync tracks from the Top Songs list that can be reached through the Turkey and Global options of musical.ly. In each option, it is surprising to observe that the Turkey list is almost always identical to the Global list. Rather than having some local Turkish popular music tracks, the Turkey option connects the musers in Turkey to trending tracks in English. — Crystal Abidin and Megan Lindsay Brown (eds.), Microcelebrity Around the Globe, 473

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter claim that YouTube’s auto-captioning serves 10 Northern languages excluding billions of speakers — same platform-driven linguistic/cultural marginalization. — connects to: Arranged classical music reduces cultural goods to hit-song entertainment; In-game virtual concerts now premiere global hit songs and drive chart success — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media: How Wall Street…, 417; Commercialization denatured folk music even as it created new entertainers — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 274 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing whether the app’s 20 languages but no Turkish, plus Westernized Top Songs, reflect deliberate or emergent corporate positioning.

Broader Connections

• In-game virtual concerts now premiere global hit songs and drive chart success #expands (0.85) — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 417
• Arranged classical music reduces cultural goods to hit-song entertainment #exemplifies (0.75)
• Commercialization denatured folk music even as it created new entertainers #exemplifies (0.70) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 274