It’s hardly news at this point that Latin Music is exploding in popularity worldwide, but within that broad category, one particular subset has been standing out: Música Mexicana.
In a report released on Friday (May 3), Spotify put some hard numbers to this phenomenon. The DSP reported that streams of Música Mexicana grew by 55% globally in 2023; between 2018 and 2023, streams grew by 440%.
The trend is a little more intense among youthful Gen-Z listeners, among whom streams of the genre have grown by 60% over the past year.
And not surprisingly, the trend is also particularly pronounced in Latin America, Spotify said, with streams growing by more than 195% in the region between 2020 and 2023.
The streaming service stressed that collaborations between artists are helping to propel Música Mexicana to new heights.
“Last year, Grupo Frontera collaborated with Bad Bunny on un100xto, which became the most-streamed Música Mexicana song in a single day, as well as the group’s biggest hit to date. And just this month, Natanael Cano appeared on Bizarrap’s Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 59,” the Spotify report noted.
More specifically, there’s a cross-cultural exchange taking place between Mexican and Colombian artists, helping to elevate their popularity in both countries, Spotify said.
In Colombia, Mexican music has grown in popularity by more than double the amount seen in Latin America overall – streams were up 445% between 2020 and 2023.
“The instruments, melodies, and lyrics of the genre have greatly influenced the current generation of Colombian music and in turn spawned a number of collaborations between Mexican and Colombian artists, beginning with Christian Nodal and Piso 21’s Pa’ Olvidarme De Ella.
“Most notably, Peso Pluma appeared on Karol G’s QLONA and invited Blessd to hop on LAS MORRAS, while Carin Leon teamed up with Maluma on Según Quién and Piso 21 on Que Triste. Perhaps not coincidentally, both artists stand as the top two Música Mexicana artists when it comes to Spotify streams in Colombia,” Spotify reported.
“The instruments, melodies, and lyrics of [Música Mexicana] have greatly influenced the current generation of Colombian music and in turn spawned a number of collaborations between Mexican and Colombian artists.”
Spotify
The report added that Colombia has become a must-stop for touring Mexican artists, from Carin Leon to Grupo Frontera.
And Mexico is reciprocating for Colombian artists: “Colombian singer-songwriter Camilo… receives more streams from fans in Mexico City than anywhere else in the world,” the report said.
The growth of Música Mexicana hasn’t been lost on the global music industry.
In just the past half a year, Sony Music-owned distributor and artist/label services firm The Orchard signed a distribution deal with superstar Peso Pluma; Universal Music’s Interscope signed a partnership with Natanael Cano’s label, Los CT; Downtown Artist & Label Services bolstered its involvement in the genre with an expansion of its partnership with Kartel Music and the signing of Latin Grammy-nominated Beto Vega; and K-pop giant HYBE headquartered its new HYBE Latin America division in Mexico.
Spotify’s report on Música Mexicana comes five months after it released an analysis of the broader Latin music genre, in which it found that the number of Latin music listeners on its platform jumped by a whopping 986% between 2014 and 2023.
Notably, the data showed that Latin music has become come to dominate the music scene in many Spanish-speaking countries. In Argentina, for example, the share of Spanish-language streamed music rose from 25% in 2013 to 94% today.
In the US, the world’s largest recorded music market, Latin music has been making waves for years, and in 2023, it grew once again, with recorded music revenues hitting $1.4 billion, up 16% YoY (double the overall growth rate of US recorded music revenues, at 8% YoY), according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Latin music had passed the $1 billion revenue mark in the US for the first time just a year earlier.
The Latin music trend is just one aspect of an increasingly globalizing music culture, where once-dominant Anglo-American musical acts are ceding ground to a growing number of acts in genres such as K-pop, Indian music and Afrobeats, in an increasingly diverse range of languages.
In the latest edition of Spotify’s Loud & Clear music economics report, released in March, the music streaming service reported that more than half of the 66,000 artists on the platform who generated at least $10,000 in 2023 were from countries where English is not the first language.
And according to data from market monitor Luminate, among the top 10,000 most-streamed music tracks in 2023 (on both audio and video platforms), 54.9% were in English, down more than seven percentage points from 62.1% in 2022 – which, in turn, was down from 67.0% in 2021.
“Artists who – in the past – might have struggled to break through are now finding their audiences, and the music industry today is a more diverse and accurate reflection of the world we live in,” Spotify said in its report from March.
“Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Korean lead the pack for performance in languages other than English – while Hindi, Indonesian, Punjabi, Tamil, and Greek all saw huge upticks in 2023.”Music Business Worldwide
