I've found it strange that compared to the other major developed economies of the world, that Germany's popular culture doesn't seem to be as popular worldwide. The UK has The Beatles, Harry Potter, James Bond and the Premier League. Japan has popular video games such as Super Mario and Pokemon, manga and anime. The USA pretty much goes without saying. Why is this?

Everyone understands English, but you can't say the same for German. As for Japan, it's an exotic culture for many western people, and it's also a very modern country. Maybe other Asian countries could be in the same situation, but I'm under the impression that their development kicked in later than Japan's, so Japan has some historic advantage there.

I love Rammstein.

I don't have the answers but I will attempt it.

UK and USA are english and english=pop culture. Japanese are very open to english and they invent new japanese words all the time to match english words called loan words. Japan is also a bigger trading partner than Germany. Japan also dislikes most of their neighbors so they share their culture with english speakers, while Germany has a good relationship with it's european neighbors, so a lot of its pop culture doesn't get to us.

China is number 2 and they probably have less pop culture than Germany.

German's pio culture is awful lol

China I'm not surprised by because of how high the piracy is there, and they don't necessarily have the best relationship with both their Asian neighbors and the West.

Language. English speaking countries got early footholds in modern media. Film, television, news, games, etc flourished. More of the internet is written in English than all other languages combined. Dominate media, dominate culture. Capitalism and industry were big contributors to this too, I'm sure.

And ironically lose to tiny countries like Moldavia, where talent should be surely lacking.

At least, they've got the board-game culture cornered!

No large german empire has ever existed, hence the language hasn't spread across the globe.

Britain and now America both have had global empires, which spread the english language.

And Japan just because they were best with electronics really.

But, couldn't the same be said about almost any other country?

Now, I think US and UK have the language advantage. I mean, English is the 2nd (or 3rd?) most spoken language in the world. So there is that.