By mid-2024, Latin music is the fastest-growing genre on U.S. streaming services, according to a new report released Tuesday by entertainment data analytics firm Luminate.
The booming genre had nearly 51 billion streams as of June 27, a 15.1% increase over the same period last year, and is experiencing a higher growth rate than rock, pop, country or Christian/gospel music. Despite the increase, Latin music remains the fifth most-streamed genre in the United States.
“A large part of that growth was driven by the continued rise of regional Mexican music, which is the largest Latin music subgenre so far this year with over 13 billion on-demand audio streams in the US and a year-over-year growth rate of +36.9%,” said Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations, in a statement.
Of the most-streamed Latin musicians in the U.S. to date, three of the four are regional Mexican artists: Peso Pluma, Fuerza Regida and Junior H. Bad Bunny was the most-streamed Latin artist in the country. All four artists have been streamed more than 100 million times in the past six months.
Marcos Juarez, director of Latin music programming at Pandora, attributes the rise in popularity to a larger cultural movement in which Latinidad is more visible than ever. Having worked at the U.S.-only streaming service for more than a decade, he says Latin music has always been important to Pandora, but not to this extent.
“We haven’t seen this much penetration of Latin music in global music listening markets for this long or on such a consistent basis,” Juarez said. “Audiences have become more acculturated to Latin American culture. Listeners who primarily listen to music in English were much less receptive to music in Spanish and much less receptive to music in languages other than their native language. But we don’t see that problem as much anymore.”
Latin music’s move into the mainstream is most evident in markets like Los Angeles. As of this writing, songs by Latin artists occupy 16 of the top 25 most-streamed songs on Apple Music in the region. “Gata Only” by FloyyMenor and Cris MJ takes the top spot at No. 3, closely followed by “Si antes te había conocí” by Karol G and “Si no quieres no” by Luis R. Conriquez and Neton Vega in fourth and fifth place, respectively.
“There have been moments throughout popular culture where we see Latino explosions, but I think what’s unique right now is the scale of it all,” Juarez said.
