In an age when you can travel halfway around the world and buy the same STARBUCKS Frappucino you could have bought halfway around your own block while listening to the same BILLIE EILISH song, probably on the same speakers, it's nice to be reminded that regional tastes still exist. Part 2 of CHARTMETRIC's amazing series on so-called "Trigger Cities"—metropolises in Latin America and South and Southeast Asia whose youngish populations of streaming music power users appear to be influencing what everyone else in the world is listening to—drills down on the particular tastes of the 10 countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Part 1 of the series described how listening activity in Mexico City and São Paulo can directly trigger playlist placements in the US, and how "what an Indonesian hipster finds for free on SOUNDCLOUD might soon be played by a SPOTIFY Premium for Family teenage user in Iowa next week." In Part 2, writer/researcher JASON JOVEN zooms in on markets like Bangkok, Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City and shows how pop (as defined by SHAZAM tags) is dominant there in a way that it isn't in major cities in the US (where hip-hop rules) and Western Europe (where pop, hip-hop, dance and various regional styles vie for attention). On Southeast Asian Spotify, that means a lot of Western pop with K-pop mixed in. On YOUTUBE, the mix is significantly more K-pop along with local pop acts that vary from country to country; on INSTAGRAM, the locals become more dominant. Also, a Nashville YouTuber named LANDON AUSTIN is the third most popular artist on Spotify in Ho Chi Minh City—perhaps, Joven reasons, because his "pristine vocals and a soft veneer of acoustic guitars and pianos" resonate with "Southeast Asia’s love of very friendly, non-controversial pop music." Make of that what you will; Joven suggests Austin should be booking shows all over Southeast Asia. He suggests Western labels aggressively target those markets, too, which they presumably already know. This is MOTOWN president ETHIOPIA HABTEMARIAM talking to MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE's TIM INGHAM: "We’re always thinking about streaming, how it connects the world; how people in Africa are listening to the same music we are the moment it drops here. These kids, worldwide, are on the same wavelength—we have to strategize around that." I'd like to think that strategy is more about importing their tastes to the US more than the other way around. But I'm not quite prepared to put money on that... UMG's top archivist has told his staff the record company is taking concrete steps "to provide our artists with transparency and answers as quickly as possible" about the 2008 fire in its vault on the UNIVERSAL STUDIOS backlot—only 11 years after it happened. When the fire started, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER was governor of California, SPOTIFY hadn't launched and DRAKE was self-releasing mixtapes, in case you're wondering what your label means when it says it will get back to you as quickly as possible... In DANNY BOYLE's alternate-universe fantasy YESTERDAY, which opens Friday, the BEATLES have been erased from all but one man's memory. But what if that last memory got erased, too? What if there had never been a "YESTERDAY" in the first place? It's a question that, not surprisingly, has come up before. MusicSET: "Strawberry Fields Never: Imagine There's No Beatles"... RIP MIKE BELKIN SR.