By Jocelle Koh

On the 8th of January 2026, Taiwanese music blog inwesternmusic posted an infographic titled ‘Western music is dead? Lady Gaga is Taiwan’s Last Ancestral Tablet’.

Using 2025 wrap up statistics from three locally available streaming platforms, Spotify, KKBOX and LINE TODAY, they highlighted Lady Gaga as the only standalone Anglo-Saxon artist to conquer multiple charts across the region, leaving a question mark as to the market’s changing receptiveness to traditionally defined Western music (by artists developed & debuted in the West). 

Instead, these top 10 charts were dominated by a very specific subset of K-pop solo artists who have each attempted their own ventures into the Western music space through a combination of high-quality solo rollouts and collaborations with Western pop artists such as Dua Lipa (Handlebars, JENNIE), Megan Thee Stallion (Strategy, TWICE) and Doja Cat/Raye (Born Again, LISA). 

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Inwesternmusic, who has been steadily monitoring western music trends since 2017 came to the conclusion due to the year-end statistics that “What defines ‘Western Music’ has already been redefined in Taiwan”.

While the blog post ended by expressing a certain indignance at the state of affairs; exploring questions such as the impact of algorithms on the charts and encouraging further diversity for Western music consumed by Taiwanese audiences, these statistics triggered a completely different, yet equally arresting thought for me. 

“Are the tastes of Taiwanese audiences a predictor for global musical trends, and if so, what could this mean for their presence on the world stage?”

While most Asian music fans would know Taiwan to be one of the longstanding tastemakers of Mandopop, and the home of legacy talent such as Jay Chou, Jolin Tsai, A-Mei and more, it has become clear in recent years that they have lost their footing to the breakneck expansion of the Chinese music industry, due to its sheer audience size and available resources (As of 2023, China is the world’s 5th biggest music industry, while Taiwan comes in at 27th).

And yet, while the Taiwanese government have continued to invest heavily in their local music industry and its exports (between 2021 and 2025, BAMID (Taiwan’s bureau of audiovisual music industry development) gave out over 38 million USD in funding in grants alone), perhaps there is another lesser-explored but equally important side of the coin to be explored. That the unique tastes and strategic makeup of Taiwanese music listeners could potentially position the island as a strategic export hub for a diversity of music.

Going way back, the island has historically been exposed to a diversity of cultural and linguistic influences. Aboriginal Taiwanese and Han Chinese of various dialects coexist on the island with 16 official languages and over 40 dialects, not to mention a colourful history of colonisation that is still reflected in parts of the island’s culture. This includes 50 years of Japanese occupation (1895-1945), 38 years of Dutch rule (1624-1662), and 16 years of Spanish rule (1626-1642). Strategic influence from the U.S. since the 1970s and of course Chinese influence historically and ongoing political tensions with the Mainland have also markedly shaped Formosa’s social, political and cultural landscape.

This shows up in Taiwanese consumption habits today. According to an analysis of Spotify’s ‘Top 200 Weekly Chart’ from 2019 to 2023 done by TAICCA, it showed a surprising linguistic and multicultural diversity, featuring songs in Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, and Western/European languages, reflecting a non-homogenous market potentially more accepting of overseas influence.

And there’s the technological factor too. Due to the early importing of recording technology while heavy restrictions existed in neighbouring Mainland in the 1910s, Taiwan has had a technological leg up even before they became a regional tastemaker and pioneer of contemporary Mandopop.

This premium access to recording and distribution technology has continued to benefit Taiwan even today. The island was in fact home to the world’s first legal streaming brand KKBOX which was established in 2004, making Taiwanese audiences one of the earliest and most successful adopters of music streaming technology. When global streaming giant Spotify was first launched as a freemium/premium model in 2013, Taiwanese local streaming platform KKBOX had already been operating on a paid model for almost two decades with a market monopoly.

But today, according to TAICCA’s 2022 survey which monitored the listening habits of 2000 listeners, it seems that KKBOX has lost its stranglehold on the market with 34% of respondents KKBOX users, and a pretty even spread of users across YouTube Music (43%), Spotify (42%) and Apple Music (21%). This reflects a healthy market with room for lots of listening styles, an appreciation for diverse genres and languages, and a higher-than-average willingness to pay for music ingrained in your average Taiwanese listener (KKBOX and Apple Music are fully premium platforms).

Indeed on my recent trip where I travelled to four cities in Taiwan (Taipei, Tainan, Qishan, Zuoying), music was everywhere I went. In nail salons, on every car ride, every shop front, even in the rubbish truck and metro train arrival announcements! 

I heard everything from Western pop to K-pop to Mandopop to Hokkien rock to Japanese rock, reflection of a certain level of curation rather than a sonically homogenous soundscape. 

Another reflection of Taiwan’s more active consumption habits is a fun fact hidden in K-pop lore. Due to the extremely organised fan club culture in Taiwan, it was one of the earliest trigger cities that sustained the Hallyu wave alongside Hong Kong and China. In other words,  they know how to be good music fans. 

But coming back to Lady Gaga versus K-pop solo acts on the charts – what does this all mean? What struck me was, as inwesternmusic mentioned, the so-called redefinition of Western music for Taiwanese audiences. But is it truly a bad thing to redefine western music as we know it?

Given Taiwanese audiences’ diverse tastes and unique listening habits – is this really a sign that things need to change? Or could they instead be reflecting an irreversible tipping of the scales towards a more diverse global music scene?

Longer than they have been a centre for Mandopop, Taiwan has been a silent conduit of change; a channel that has supported the growth of K-pop and the regional growth of Japanese music, while connecting much of the diaspora to the mandarin music world at both ends of the supply chain. Could Taiwan’s tastes in fact have been at the forefront of changing global and regional music trends all this time?

Perhaps this island of music appreciators is one of the reasons Taiwan has slowly but steadily regained their footing, this time as an indie music capital in Asia, whilst secretly providing a fertile brooding ground for music export from neighbouring regions such as Japan, Korea and international acts.

So is there more that Taiwan can offer other than domination as a Mandopop capital? Absolutely.

Do we know what exactly? Only time will tell. But one thing’s for sure, this quirky island brimming with stories to tell still has a lot more to give.

Special thanks to inwesternmusic for giving us much food for thought!