Music on Slovenian Radio: Local Legends, Global Pop Trends, and Regional Influences

Based on quantitative and qualitative methods, the article analyzes the presence of Slovenian and foreign music in Slovenian radio and television media. It pays special attention to the role of media gatekeeping in shaping popular music and musical tastes in Slovenia. The analysis shows that the media selection of music considers specific cultural, social, and political criteria. These criteria are reflected, among other things, in the non-inclusion of “bounce” genres, in the polarization at the level of musical taste, in the regulation of music migration, and in the formation of specific conceptual borders, which gatekeepers both consider and establish.
Keywords: music migration, globalization, media, Slovenian folk-pop, gatekeeping

The article analyzes the occurrence of Slovenian and foreign music in Slovenian radio and television media. Taking as its starting point the theory of media gatekeeping (and linking it to the context of migration studies), it attempts to detect the norms, practices, and principles of selection that have the most significant influence on the formation of popular music in Slovenia.
The analysis shows that the media selection of music considers specific cultural, social, and political criteria. These criteria result from specific historical development in the region in which the processes of globalization of popular culture and the transition from socialism to post-socialism coincide.
In this context, the distinctions between rural/urban, traditional/modern, and domestic/foreign are the key factors that media gatekeepers consider. These distinctions are related to the perception of specific music genres as polarizing and, therefore, largely unsuitable for inclusion in Slovenian media programs (Slovenian folk-pop functions as a representative example in this context). Following these distinctions, we also classify the main principles of gatekeeping of music on Slovenian media: some of the media mainly try to address the urban population (Val 202), others focus on more domestic cultural tastes (Radio Ognjišče, Radio Veseljak), some aim to reach the broadest possible audience with global and non-polarizing pop (Radio 1), and still others are successful with a selection of music from the Balkan and Mediterranean regions (Radio Aktual).
As we have observed, the routes of music and musical tastes cross many borders, controlled by many actors and decision-making processes. The Slovenian media environment is open primarily to the migratory routes of global popular music and shows ambivalent relationships toward the music from the region. Gatekeeping in the music sphere is crucial in reproducing the boundary between local and global cultural tastes.