Latin Music Is the Fastest-Growing Genre on Streaming in the U.S.

Latin music has undoubtedly become a global genre — and it’s also leading streaming numbers in the United States. On Tuesday, Luminate released its Midyear Report for 2024, sharing key insights on the genre’s dominance on streaming services.

Among Luminate’s findings is that Latin music has become the fastest-growing streaming genre in the United States with an increase of 15 percent from 2023, outperforming growth from other genres such as rock and pop.

The data also revealed that Latin music fans are more likely to stream the genre’s music released in the last year and a half, as opposed to deeper catalogs more than five years old. In fact, 35 percent of all Latin streams in the U.S. are for albums that dropped in the last 18 months.

Jaime Marconette, a Luminate executive, told the Associated Press that Latin music was among the top three fastest-growing genres in the United States, and attributed some of the success to the rise of música mexicana. “[It’s] the largest Latin music subgenre so far this year with more than 13 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams,” Marconette said.

In the first six months of the year, seven of the 200 most-streamed artists of the year were Latin music acts: Bad Bunny, Rauw Alejandro, Carín León, Peso Pluma, Fureza Régida, Karol G, and Aventura.

Globally, FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s song “Gata Only” ranked at Number Five as the song with the most global streams, bringing in 0.982 billion streams across platforms. The track outperformed “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends,” and is the only Latin act featured in the Top 10.

When it comes to streaming services, Latin music fans are also 38 percent more likely to consider products outside of music — videos, games, etc. — from their favorite artists. Latin fans who have paid music subscriptions are also 32 percent more likely to purchase CDs of their favorite acts outside of streaming.

Latin music listeners are also the second-most likely fans to stream music from their favorite artists in the genre the first week of its release, only trailing behind K-pop, the Luminate data revealed.