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Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu have revolutionized the way we consume media. By offering a vast array of shows and movies from around the world, they've made international content easily accessible, allowing for a more diversified media consumption. This shift has not only introduced audiences to foreign cultures but has significantly contributed to the global spread of popular culture.

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Netflix's global growth is a big factor in the company's success. It operates in over 190 countries, and its international streaming revenues now exceed its domestic revenues. But only eight years ago Netflix was only in the U.S. How did it expand so quickly? First, it didn't enter all markets at once. It started slowly, in countries that were similar to its U.S. home market. Using what it learned in these markets, it expanded to a few dozen countries by 2015, and then continued learning and growing from there. Second, it adapted to local cultures and preferences, using that knowledge to appeal to customers all over the world, both with its content offerings and with the partnerships it formed with local stakeholders. Netflix's strategy constitutes a new approach to growth that the author calls exponential globalization, and it's one that other companies can use too.

Netflix's global growth is a big factor in the company's success. By 2017 it was operating in over 190 countries, and today close to 73 million of its some 130 million subscribers are outside the U.S. In the second quarter of 2018, its international streaming revenues exceeded domestic streaming revenues for the first time. This is a remarkable achievement for a company that was only in the U.S. before 2010, and in only 50 countries by 2015.

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How Netflix Expanded to 190 Countries in 7 Years

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Netflix's global growth is a big factor in the company's success. It operates in over 190 countries, and its international streaming revenues now exceed its domestic revenues. But only eight years ago Netflix was only in the U.S. How did it expand so quickly? First, it didn't enter all markets at once.

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Social Media: A New Cultural Battleground

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Social Media: A New Cultural Battleground

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Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter have become key players in the dissemination of culture and media worldwide. These digital spaces allow for the instant sharing of content across the globe, fostering a new form of cultural exchange. From viral dance trends to meme culture, social media has been instrumental in shaping modern popular culture.

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Behind TikTok: ByteDance

TikTok is a video-sharing social media app launched on the international market in 2017. The platform is owned by Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, which is behind the release of several popular apps including Douyin, Toutiao, and Lemon8. In 2023, ByteDance was the leading unicorn worldwide, with a valuation of 200 billion U.S. dollars. The company monetizes its brands by offering ad spaces, with TikTok's short video offering being particularly suited to host bite-sized commercial messaging. While mainstream social media platforms have been struggling with protecting their growth, ByteDance saw almost 30 billion U.S. dollars in revenues in the second quarter of 2023, up by 40 percent compared the corresponding quarter in 2022.

TikTok users: young, eager, and connected

TikTok allows users to create, edit, and share short-form video clips that are enhanced with filters and accompanied by the latest music trends. The platform comes as a free-to-download app, a factor that made onboarding easy for mobile users - who currently represent over 90 percent of the global digital population.

The majority content creators on TikTok are between 18 and 24 years old, a factor that contributes to the platform being popular among Millennial and Gen Z users: as of January 2024, 19 percent of TikTok users were men aged between 18 and 24 years, while women in the same age group accounted for around 18 percent of the platform's user base.

A possible TikTok ban?

In 2023, TikTok faced a partial ban on institutional and governmental devices in several countries: in February, European Parliament staff were recommended to remove TikTok from their personal devices, and in March the UK banned TikTok downloads from government mobile phones - a moved approved by over half of the country. Australia followed, banning the app from government-owned devices in April.

As TikTok was the favorite short-video social media platform among U.S. users in 2022, a possible ban would favor ByteDance's largest competitors in the region - namely Meta and YouTube, which launched short-video formats Instagram reels and YouTube Shorts in 2020 on the wave of TikTok's popularity.

ByteDance is not exactly new to controversies: in 2020, the company lost access to the Indian market to an extended apps ban. This prompted the United States government to announced it was considering removing Chinese social media platform from its market due to alleged data collection malpractices. The Biden administration later revoked the executive order, but the tug of war between TikTok and institutions continued well into 2022. Despite its proven resilience, losing the U.S market will represent a hard blow to ByteDance, as the country was the largest market for the social video app, counting approximately 150 million users in January 2024. While the March 2023 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing of TikTok CEO Shou Chew made clear that the motion to ban the popular social video app would have bi-partisan support, U.S. citizens opinion remains ambivalent.

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Find the latest statistics and facts about TikTok

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The Korean Wave, known as Hallyu, refers to the global popularity of South Korean culture, starting from the late 1990s. It encompasses everything from K-pop to Korean dramas and movies, significantly impacting global fashion, music, and entertainment industries. The phenomenon demonstrates the powerful influence of cultural exports in shaping global tastes and preferences.

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BTS was formed in 2012 after a series of auditions held by BigHit. The seven-member K-pop group -- which consists of RM, V, Jung Kook, Jin, Suga, Jimin and J-Hope -- made its debut on June 13, 2013, with '2 Cool 4 Skool.' The septet developed a loyal worldwide following called ARMY, with 'The Most Beautiful Moment in Life, Pt. 2' -- which was released in November 2015 -- becoming BTS' first album to debut on the Billboard 200, arriving at No. 171 on the Dec. 19, 2015-dated chart. When 'Love Yourself: Tear' was released in May 2018, it debuted at No. 1 on the all-genre tally, making the album not only BTS' first Billboard 200 chart-topper, but also the first K-pop album to reach the summit. Since then, BTS has garnered multiple Grammy nominations, including best pop duo/group performance ("Dynamite," "Butter" and "My Universe") and best music video ("Yet to Come"). The group has also had multiple cross-genre collaborations, including with Benny Blanco and Snoop Dogg ("Bad Decisions"), Halsey ("Boy With Luv"), Coldplay ("My Universe"), Megan Thee Stallion ("Butter" remix), Nicki Minaj ("Idol") and many more.

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BTS | Biography, Music & News | Billboard

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BTS was formed in 2012 after a series of auditions held by BigHit. The seven-member K-pop group -- which consists of RM, V, Jung Kook, Jin, Suga, Jimin and J-Hope -- made its debut on June 13, 2013...

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Japanese anime has had a profound impact on global culture, captivating audiences worldwide with its unique storytelling, art style, and themes. From iconic series like 'Naruto' and 'Dragon Ball' to recent hits like 'Demon Slayer', anime has become a cultural export that bridges the gap between Japan and the rest of the world, influencing various aspects of global popular culture including art, fashion, and entertainment.

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One of the seismic cultural shifts of the pandemic era has been a migration into fantasies. Some of them are troubling, such as the conspiratorial prejudice that has fuelled QAnon and the recent surge in violence against those of Asian descent. Others are restorative: the immersive worlds of books, the virtual realities of video games, the hypnotic lull of binge-streamed television series.

Many of the escapes that we use to nourish ourselves originated in Japan. The stunning success of Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sold thirty-one million copies worldwide last year, is a striking example. Now we have another, in the form of an imported anime with a mouthful of a title: "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train." It débuted in Japanese theatres in October of 2020, then arrived in American ones in April. It quickly set records for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a foreign film, as well as the highest-earning R-rated animated film. All of this has conspired to make it the planet's single top-grossing film of 2020.

This success might seem surprising, as anime has long been considered a fringe subculture, but the film's momentum was presaged by the enthusiasm of its reception in Japan. When "Mugen Train" opened there, pandemic-weary audiences flocked to see it in theatres outfitted with socially distanced seating. By the end of the year, the film had emerged as more than simply a coronavirus phenomenon. It had done the unthinkable, unseating Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 epic, "Spirited Away," to become the highest-grossing film in Japanese history. What Miyazaki's beloved film had earned over the course of nineteen years, "Mugen Train" surpassed in just three months.

It's tempting to frame the success of "Mugen Train" as a passing of the torch from an elderly master to a younger generation-and, indeed, Miyazaki has said that he considers the film a " rival." (Miyazaki, who has announced his retirement numerous times over the decades, is currently working on what is purported to be his final film, titled "How Do You Live?") But "Mugen Train" is the product of a very different creative process, and a very different media environment. Miyazaki's films are meditative, self-contained stories, created and financed independently, outside of the traditional corporate production committees that sustain Japan's commercial animation industry. He is an auteur who wears his politics on his sleeve, pens his own scripts, insists on checking nearly every frame himself, and long resisted merchandising his creations. In contrast, the hyperkinetic "Mugen Train" is the latest installment in a series envisioned as a mass-market multimedia product from the very start. Tellingly, the vast majority of media coverage has focussed on its box-office success instead of its director, Haruo Sotozaki, or its writers, who aren't credited individually but under the name of the film's production company, Ufotable.

"Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train" is the continuation of a hit television series called "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba," which was, in turn, based upon a hit manga of the same title, by the artist Koyoharu Gotoge. The series is set in Japan's Taisho era, which lasted from 1912 to 1926; the precise date is never specified. The hero is Tanjiro Kamado, a boy who ekes out a living with his mother and siblings in the verdant mountains of a rapidly modernizing Japan. One day, Tanjiro returns from an errand to discover that his family has been slaughtered by demons: vicious monsters that roam the land in search of human blood. For these malevolent creatures, humans are both sustenance and a medium of reproduction, for once bitten, a human will inevitably turn demon. A blend of Western vampire lore and local Japanese folk traditions, the demons are dark mirrors of the human condition, their appearances varying wildly depending on whatever negative traits they possessed as humans. The lone survivor of this massacre is Tanjiro's sister Nezuko, who now teeters on the cusp of turning into a demon herself. Before Tanjiro can react, a mysterious warrior appears and tries to kill Nezuko; Tanjiro instinctively protects her. During the battle, it becomes clear that Nezuko has retained her human personality and is actively resisting her thirst for blood. The stranger fits Nezuko with a bamboo gag-better safe than sorry-then instructs Tanjiro to seek out a secret society called the Demon Slayer Corps. So it is that the siblings are thrust into a shadow war playing out between humanity and demon-kind.

None of this context is explained in the film; instead, the backstory plays out across twenty-six blood-drenched television episodes, more than ten hours in total, available to stream on Netflix, Crunchyroll, and other platforms. "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train" picks up precisely where the series leaves off. There is no recap, and nothing in the way of exposition. Theatregoers are presumed to have their tickets, so to speak, for the train ride on which most of the film's action unfolds. ("It's almost impressive how fast 'Mugen Train' is able to completely disorient anyone who doesn't already know where it's going," IndieWire wrote.)

Expecting such familiarity with a large amount of source material would seem an obstacle to mainstream success, but "Mugen Train" had some help. Trapped indoors by COVID-19 restrictions, a lot of us turned to streaming platforms for solace, and a great many of the shows that we watched were anime. Netflix reported a fifty-per-cent increase in viewership of the genre compared to the year before.

"Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba" débuted as a print manga, in February, 2016, in the pages of a magazine called Weekly Shonen Jump. Launched in 1968, Jump is one of Japan's oldest and most successful manga weeklies; at its peak, in the nineties, it sold more than six million copies every week. Key to the publication's enduring popularity is a calculated approach to cultivating talent, honed over the decades by an editorial department that carefully directs the output of freelance comic creators. Every issue of Jump contains a postcard asking readers to rank their favorite titles; this data is then used to shape the direction of story lines in real time. The Jump formula has produced some of Japan's most enduring pop-cultural hits, including "Dragon Ball," "Naruto," "One Piece," and "My Hero Academia." It could be argued that, by teasing out episodes of manga via the "algorithm" of reader feedback, and then compiling the most popular series into separately sold stand-alone volumes that could be "binged" all at once, Jump presaged the way the world consumes streaming entertainment today.

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"Demon Slayer": The Viral Blockbuster from Japan

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Matt Alt writes about the popularity of the Japanese anime movie "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train."