Off Topic Musically, why is the UK so prolific?

Was thinking about this last night. For a relatively mall Island nation we produce some of the greatest bands and artist the world has seen.

We only have a fraction of population of the likes of the US but seem to punch well above our weight in most music categories.

Wiki has the following info regarding the biggest selling artists of all time:

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There's a distinct UK flavour to this...........

So why is it?

 

It's probably a cultural thing.
Don't forget the U.S. Is big on country and Western.

 

Because Azerbajani goat lullabyes are totally lost on the vast majority of people and totally under rated.

If people listened to the lyrics of the poor herder singing a love song about his favourite goat. They would soon stop listening to one direction.

 

Didn't we invent the 60's? I think we also invented the 70's. Then America invented the 80's before apologising for allowing the creation of Starship, Go West and Bill Joel. We then collaborated on inventing the 90's playing a form of rock, paper, scissors (Oasis beats Blur who beats Nirvana who beats Oasis....) then divorced after the great Boy Band War of 1999 (where the world lost several great haircuts and dance moves) to go our separate way for the noughties.

 

I remember watching documentary a while ago where they implied this was in part due to the size of the country. It was actually a lot easier for new talents to get stuff played over here on national radio which brings them to a wide audience and leads to popularity quickly whereas in States there was no real national radio and bands and their agents would have to traipse round the country trying to build some momentum behind a record.
I also think that America used to be more middle of the road in everything artistic and reflected the make-up of society, we tended to be trend-setters because we were more open to new ideas and styles. Rock and roll may have been invented there but a lot of the new trends came from here - all the good comedy shows and the good TV tended to be British. However think we have certainly fallen behind on the TV stuff - American dramas are so much better now and even some of their comedy shows are better than what we do.
Our music scene has been badly harmed by shows like X-Factor, Pop Idol etc - where we end up with so many manufactured, bland, crap acts who want instant success. Cowell has a lot to answer for. The way we listen to music now doesn't help either - my daughter can't understand why I download whole albums on I-Tunes, instead of just picking out a few tunes from there, but that's what I grew up doing - it was difficult to jump tracks on my record player without scratching the record. But listening to a whole album gives you a much deeper appreciation of what the artist was trying to convey. I am sure then we got more into particular bands because of it.