Latine Music’s Growth Has Outpaced Country Music’s This Year

As can be seen on TikTok, the Latine community isn’t the only one jamming out to “Titi Me Preguntó” and the rest of the hits off Un Verano Sin Ti. Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, released its 2022 mid-year music report on July 14. Among its key findings is that Latine music growth has outpaced country music. And yes, we have Benito to thank for that. 

The increase in Latine music is up 33 percent, whereas country music slowed to 9 percent for the year — with Bad Bunny being cited for the surge. The week Un Verano Sin Ti came out, Latine music garnered 1.82 billion weekly on-demand audio streams. With it, it surpassed the country genre for the first time — making Latine music the fourth most popular genre in the U.S. behind pop, rock, and R&B/hip-hop that week. El Conejo Malo accounts for 5 percent of all U.S. Latine streaming consumption in 2022.

Bad Bunny’s summer hit occupies the No. 2 spot on the Top Album list for the year (which includes sales and streams), with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s soundtrack for Encanto taking home the top place, beating out Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, and Drake. 

The study also revealed that 40 percent of Latine music listeners vibing out to the likes of Karol G, Rauw Alejandro, and Maluma are not of Latine origin. They also spend an average of 69 hours a month listening to Latine music, 25 percent more than the average listener, and 25 percent more than the average on live music events. Moreover, the age demo skews towards a younger audience — millennials (30 percent), followed by Gen Z (25 percent), and Gen X (23 percent). 

With the analytics showing that nearly one in four Latine songs within the top 10,000 most streamed songs across the industry this year were collaborations (Karol G and Becky’s “MAMIII” being the most popular in 2022), you can expect to see stars, both Latine or not, partnering up to rack up streams.