Have you listened to more music in the last year? You are not the only ones.
The global music industry surpassed 4 trillion streams online in 2023, a new single-year record, according to Luminate’s 2023 year-end report.
Global online streams also increased by 34% compared to last year, reflecting an increasingly international music market.
In the United States, three genres saw the strongest growth in 2023: country (23.7%), Latin (which encompasses all Latin music genres, up 24.1%), and world music ( a catch-all that includes J-pop, K-pop and Afrobeats, up 26.2%.)
Latin music breakthrough
It seems that more and more Americans are listening to non-English music. By the end of 2023, Luminate found that the share of Spanish-language music among the top 10,000 songs listened to online in the United States had increased by 3.8% and the share of English-language music had fell 3.8%.
Under the Spanish umbrella, regional Mexican music experienced significant growth. The genre term — which encompasses mariachi, banda, corridos, norteño, sierreño and other styles — grew 60% in U.S. on-demand music streams, accounting for 21.9 billion. Four of the six Latin artists who surpassed 1 billion streams online in the United States were Mexican artists: Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado, Junior H and Fuerza Regida, who also ranked among the 125 most streamed artists online .
Ella Baila Sola by Armado and Peso Pluma exceeded one billion streams on Spotify in less than a year and became the first regional hit in the top-10 Mexican on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number four—later Bad Bunny’s collaboration with Grupo Frontera, One x100toreached fifth place.
Taylor Swift domination
As for Taylor Swift in all this, the 2023 Person of the Year Time accounted for 1.79% of the US market, according to Luminate, accounting for one in 78 on-demand music listens in the US.
Her dominance is reflected in Luminate’s Top Albums of 2023 chart, where Swift accounts for five of the top ten albums in the United States.
However, when it comes to overall music consumption in the United States—even with Swift’s success and the significant successes of country music and non-English language programming—hip-hop continues to reign, accounting for 25.5% of all online listening.
Maybe it had something to do with hip-hop celebrating its 50the anniversary in 2023, as online streams of current R&B and hip-hop acts fell 7.1% from 2022, while catalog streams — of older tracks — increased 11.3%.