Selling Culture: Part 2, Reggaeton
Exploring K-pop, Reggaeton, and Afrobeats
How did Bad Bunny become the most-streamed artist on Spotify for two years in a row?
In Part 1 of this mini-series, we explored how K-pop became a global phenomenon. In today’s article, we will look at the current Latin music wave, led by global star Bad Bunny.
*For Part 2 and 3 (Afrobeats), I am studying cultures that are not my own, so if I write anything incorrect, misleading, or offensive, please reach out.
Similarly to K-pop, the popularity of Latin music is actually not that new, with songs like Daddy Yankee’s ‘Gasolina’ and Don Omar’s ‘Danza Kuduro’ seeing huge success in 2004 and 2010. Then in 2017, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s ‘Despacito’ “brought into clear view Latino artists’ rising influence in the American and music scene” (1).
In Part 1, we observed how PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ led to the global explosion of K-pop and exposed listeners outside of Asia to the idea that this ‘niche’ genre (from an outsider’s perspective) can be Pop(ualr music in the West). For Latin music, ‘Despacito’ played a similar role, “spearhead[ing] a global Latin movement” (2). We can observe this in the change in the number of Spanish tracks making it into the Billboard Hot 100 charts over the past few years:
From 2014–2016, there were around 2–4 Spanish tracks making it into the Billboard Hot 100 charts each year. In 2017, the year ‘Despacito’ was released, 19 songs that were mostly in Spanish made it into the charts. In 2020, Bad Bunny drove the number up to 41. While there were already K-pop and Latin music hits before ‘Gangnam Style’ and ‘Despacito’, these songs established the idea that genres originating from other parts of the world can become mainstream in Anglo markets.
For K-pop, we saw that although the genre became globally popular, the core fanbase was still in Asia. Are Reggaeton listeners also concentrated in a certain region? Or given that Latin America is geographically connected to North America, would listeners be more dispersed throughout the Americas?
Let’s take a look at where the main audience for Reggaeton/Latin Trap music comes from the interactive dashboard we used in Part 1.
Unsurprisingly, Mexico is the biggest contributor to the Latin music boom. 251 tracks and 116 Reggaeton/Latin Trap artists made it into Spotify’s top 200 charts in the past year. These songs collected 4,825,453,597 streams. Music Ally also confirms that most listeners of the genre come from Mexico. The US, Spain, and several Latin American countries also seem to be significant contributors.
Let’s take a closer look at the impact of the Latin music wave in the Anglo markets by comparing the top artists in the past year globally and specifically in the US.
Global Top Artists:
US:
Bad Bunny is leading significantly from a global perspective, but he is actually third after Drake and Doja Cat in the US. The next few Latin artists that come up in the US list are Stephanie Beatriz, Diane Guerrero, Adassa, Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, and Rhenzy Feliz, who made it into the charts with the song ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ featured on the Disney movie ‘Encanto’. Not all, but most of these artists/actors/actresses are American, and the song was also a Disney song in English. While this shows the increased visibility of Latin culture in the US, ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ is not exactly what I’m referring to when I say ‘Latin music’ in this mini-series. The next Latin artist on the list that was not part of ‘Encanto’ is Farruko in 71st place.
In contrast to the US chart, Bad Bunny was the top artist in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Spain. Rauw Alejandro ranked second in these countries, except in Colombia and Chile. These artists have pretty much all of Latin America on their side, with the exception of Brazil. Brazil seems to have a relatively distinct industry, most likely due to the differences in language and colonial history. Bad Bunny did not make it into the top 200 charts of Brazil a single time in the past year.
Although most Latin American countries don’t show up as dark as Mexico on the map above, imagine all of their forces combined to one. Bad Bunny is far ahead of everyone else in the global top artists list. However, he is actually not the most popular in the US as shown above, and even less so in Canada and European countries (except Spain). Overall, we can confirm that while Latin music is huge in the US and globally, the main audience is definitely in Central and Latin America, similarly to how K-pop is still most popular in Asia.
By appealing to a population in cultural and geographical proximity, you can get a push in the global market above Anglo Pop stars. The key to succeeding in this era is embracing your culture and making it apparent in your art, so that you can appeal to audiences who are eager to represent and share their culture to the world.
I personally appreciate diversity and culture, due to my background as a third culture kid. But more interestingly, from a business perspective, culture sells. Though it isn’t the most politically correct view, culture is extremely potent as a commodity. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that.
As mentioned in Part 1, cultural commodification is wide-spread in the food industry. American people love K-bbq, Sushi, Tacos, and cuisines from all around the world (though not in the most authentic way). It is very normal in the food industry to identify with a culture/ethnicity and use it as a selling point. In fact, it is pretty much a norm to curate around culture when it comes to restaurants. On Google Maps, most restaurants would be labelled ‘Mediterranean Restaurant’, ‘Italian Restaurant’, ‘Indian Restaurant’, and so on. Nobody opens just a ‘Restaurant’. I predict that the music industry will shift to resemble the food industry in this manner.
Identifying whether you are a Rock, Hip Hop, or EDM artist is like choosing whether you want to open a bakery, restaurant, or a bar. In the diversifying music industry, that is simply not specific enough as a brand for marketing purposes. Soon, even Anglo Pop artists will begin curating more around a particular culture. Pop artists like Selena Gomez and Camila Cabello started leaning more into their Latin heritage after the success of ‘Despacito’. White artists can also form their brand around a non-ethnic culture, such as ‘Gen Z’ culture. For upcoming artists, their cultural concept/identity will become one of the most central parts of marketing.
At glance, the Latin music and K-pop waves seem disconnected. While one comes from a region that is geographically connected to North America, the other comes from a completely different part of the world. It is easy to imagine that they took very different pathways to reach the global markets.
However, in Part 1 and 2, we saw key similarities between the Latin music and K-pop waves. Both were genres that were on the rise in regional markets, and exploded into the global market with the release of a critical song that drew the attention of Anglo listeners (‘Gangnam Style’ and ‘Despacito’). We also saw that the main audience for the two waves come from countries that can somewhat relate to the the culture surrounding it. The two waves establish a pattern and point to a trend of cultural commodification in the industry, as businesses strategize to engage listeners from around the world.
In Part 3, we will take a look at the rise of Afrobeats, which is the most recent trend of the three. While it is a bit different from the first two, the three waves are very much connected and must be viewed as components of one big trend indicating the commercialization of culture in the music industry, rather than separate trends. Please follow and tune in for the latter half of this mini-series to see how the global music industry will evolve!
