Impact of Intellectual Property Rights Protection on domestic music consumption: an empirical analysis

Digitization is radically changing everyday life, particularly the way music is experienced. Today, platforms like Spotify allow users to access and stream music anytime, anywhere. This shift has not only transformed the way music is created, accessed, and shared, but has also influenced the development of national policies regulating its distribution. In this paper, we examine how Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection affects the consumption of domestic music. Using Spotify data, we built a cross-sectional dataset covering 68 countries with “Top Songs of 2024” or “Top 50” playlists. We compared the nationality of the artists with the countries where their songs achieved success. Our analysis shows that the share of domestic music varies widely across countries and does not follow global patterns of IPR protection. Regression results reveal that the level of IPR protection has no significant impact on the presence of local artists. Instead, factors like market size and linguistic context, particularly being an English-speaking country, emerge as the main drivers of domestic music consumption. These findings suggest that demographic and cultural characteristics, rather than legal protection alone, play a central role in shaping the visibility of national music industries in an increasingly globalized streaming environment.