How do different cultures consume popular media?

August 16, 2009 1:26 PM

How do different countries of the world consume media (TV, music, movies, etc)?

Hi! I'm looking for a site or sites that explains and details how different cultures and countries consume/buy/rent popular media. (As an example, I had a friend recently mention that it was his understanding that the vast majority of people in South Korea didn't download MP3s, but rather had a subscription service that would stream, on demand, all available music as often as they chose for a flat fee each month.)

posted by MoreForMad to society & culture (3 comments total)

Here in Turkey (I'm not turkish, but i live here) it seems like the majority of Gen Y listens to music on their cell phones (ie: a bunch of friends get together to hang out in the park, and they take turns blasting it from their cellphones.)
For movies, there are a few video sites that are blocked/censored here (the most popular of which is Youtube), and so it feels like, as everywhere else, torrent sites proxy servers are the thing to do.
posted by hasna at 1:51 PM on August 16

In India: By far the most popular forms of media are Bollywood/other Indian movies and the music associated with them. CDs or DVDs of these are usually a fair bit cheaper than foreign music or movies (as well as cassettes, though those are obviously on their way out). A ton of pirating goes on, of both Indian media and foreign media, often for absurdly low prices from a small hole-in-the-wall shop somewhere. Torrents are very popular and so is Youtube. On campuses, file-sharing programs run on the LAN allowed easy access to a lot of media by all the students.
posted by peacheater at 2:10 PM on August 16

In Malaysia pirated DVDs and CDs are common. There's a lot of hoohaa about supporting gangland activity and all that, but I think it's mostly because movies tend to face censorship when officially released and people are also very price-conscious.

Some people do torrent, but Internet connections are not fast or stable enough for this to become the overarching majority.
posted by divabat at 4:23 PM on August 17