Latin music consumption is growing almost twice as fast as the overall music consumption in the U.S., driven largely by Latin music super fans and by the growth of regional Mexican music, according to Luminate’s most recent research on Latin music.
Unveiled at a Monday morning (Oct. 2) session during Latin Music Week 2023 presented by Luminate CEO Rob Jonas, Luminate’s research also found an unlikely discovery platform for Latin music: WhatsApp. A whooping 73% of Hispanic listeners use WhatsApp, 265% more than the general population.
Luminate’s numbers once again underscored the impressive growth of Latin music consumption. For example, in the first 34 weeks of 2022, there were 47.4 billion on demand audio streams. For the first 34 weeks of 2023, that number had jumped to 57.9 billion streams, a 22.2% upward change that far surpasses the 13.3% growth registered for the industry overall. All told, Latin is now the 5th largest major music genre in the U.S., behind only the big four core genres: R&B and Hip-Hop, pop, rock and country.
Latin music is also seeing consumption growth outside Latin pockets. A stunning 40% of all U.S. listeners report listening to music in languages other than English; and among those languages, the most listened to — after English — is Spanish. While 93% listen to music in English, roughly 23% of listeners will listen to music in Spanish.
Likewise, while the English language share of streaming in the U.S. –- as measured by the top 10,000 most streamed tracks of the past 12 months — has dipped slightly by 4% in the past year, streaming of Spanish language tracks has increased by 3.5%.
A key driver to the growth are Latin super fans. According to Luminate’s data, they spend 120% more per month on music related activities than other fans, and 30% more than U.S. super fans.
“The trends we saw starting in 2022 have accelerated and developed the growth of Latin music,” says Jonas. “We initially saw a lot of growth in streaming, but now, that growth translated to revenue. In 2023, it’s definitely been exceeding expectations.”
You can access Luminate’s full report here.
