Country statistics (part 1)

A quick post because I had the data in front of me: some statistics about countries. In a recent blog post on the Discogs blog it said "Many of the release countries expanding the fastest in the database are from Central America, South America, and Southeast Asia."

As I am already keeping some of that data it is easy to just plot a few simple graphs of some countries using the data from March 31 2019 and see if this is true (spoiler: maybe not).

Germany

Let's look at German releases first (note: this does not mean releases of German artists, or releases in German, but releases from Germany).

Releases from Germany

Clearly it seems that many releases from Germany were added in the early days and then fewer and fewer were added.

Spain

Then Spain, which I feel probably still has many releases missing (although there seems to be a very active Spanish community on Discogs).

Releases from Spain

There are far fewer releases from Spain than from Germany in the database, and the peak is later (because the Spanish collectors only started to show up later?, but there is still a drop.

The Netherlands

Releases from The Netherlands

The graph is similar to the one from Germany, but smaller. Quite a few early contributors were from the Netherlands, so it is not entirely unexpected.

Italy

Releases from Italy

Not unlike Spain, but Italian releases started to be added a bit earlier. Perhaps it is because of Italian house and Discogs being mostly dance oriented in the beginning?

France

France is quite interesting because the number of releases from France being added has been pretty constant over the years:

Releases from France

Greece

Releases from Greece

Interestingly, there is a sharp increase first, and then it falls again.

Brazil

Now let's look at some of the countries where Discogs report explosive growth, starting with Brazil:

Releases from Brazil

No arguing with that!

India

Releases from India

Although not yet at the same level as Brazil it is coming at full speed.

Bolivia

Releases from Bolivia

Bolivia is very sparsely populated, so probably not many releases, but still growth.

Peru

 

Releases from Peru

Similar to Bolivia, but it would be interesting to know why fewer releases from Peru were added for a while!

Thailand

Releases from Thailand

For releases from Thailand there is first a sharp increase, but then it is pretty constant. I wonder why. Perhaps there is not a big market for Thai records, or there only a few very active contributors from Thailand on Discogs (and they have limited time)?

Unknown

And finally, releases for which no country was specified:

Releases for which country is known

Now, that is a bit unexpected! As it turns out the biggest increase for the countries (where I am treating "unknown" as a country as well) is actually the releases with no known country! But why is that? Laziness? New releases that are "worldwide" releases? Older releases having been fixed more thoroughly? So many questions...