The unlikely resurgence of City Pop in a new time and place also speaks to the power of music to transport artist and fan communities to a distant urban imaginary. This story provides academics of popular music, and sociologists of culture with an example of how quickly the meaning-making process is evolving in the era of globalized digital media. In this short piece I discuss the unlikely story of Plastic Love, the obscure single that seemingly came from nowhere and introduced millions to the late-70s Japanese genre City Pop by way of YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. The users of YouTube and reddit (among others) are facilitating this globalization of pop culture. Fan and artist communities form out of specialist microgenres in a matter of weeks or months. Now more than ever, consumers are able to span space and time to seek out niche genres and artists. Widespread digitization has fundamentally changed the consumption, production, and distribution of music in the 21 st century. The Curious Case of Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love
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