Regional Mexican Fuels Latin Music’s Ongoing Growth in the U.S.: Luminate Mid-Year Report
Despite recent controversy over corrido, music in Spanish holds as the country’s No. 5 core genre, with on-demand audio streams growing 7.8% over the same period in 2024.
Despite bans on corridos in Mexico and a crackdown on immigrants stateside, Latin music continues its upward trajectory in the U.S. and beyond, according to Luminate’s Mid-Year Music Report published Friday (July 18), which measures consumption for the first six months of 2025, through July 3.
After ending 2024 ranked as the No. 5 core genre in the U.S. in terms of total consumption (although Latin is music in Spanish and not a genre per se, it is identified as a core genre by Luminate), Latin preserved its No. 5 spot in the first half of the year. However, its on-demand audio streams grew 7.8% over the same six-month period in 2024, to 59.4 billion. Overall, Latin’s market sharepoint change was +.25, the second largest growth of any genre behind only rock and outpacing both country and Christian/gospel.
All told, an analysis of several metrics in the report shows that Latin music, which as recently as a decade ago was still a modest niche genre in the U.S., is now playing with the big kids in the sandbox and continues registering major and consistent growth markers, both in consumption and as a percentage of the overall market.
Latin’s growth in the first six months of the year was largely fueled by regional Mexican music, the subgenre with the second highest growth rate in terms of volume, behind only alt rock.
Regional Mexican was also the sub genre with the second-largest percentage growth — 32.95% — outpacing alt rock, hard rock and Christian music and behind only the Broadway subgenre. Beyond Mexican music, however, Latin rhythm registered robust 16.25% growth — a rebound from its negative 3.8% last year. Although this is likely due in large part to the Bad Bunny effect, it shows that reports of reggaetón and urban ceding major ground to other genres were overblown. Despite being heavily touted, Latin tropical grew more modestly, by 6.16% — a sharp decrease in growth compared to the past three years — and surprisingly, Latin pop decreased by 1.29%.
Outside the U.S., things got exciting for Latin. In Luminate’s ranking of the Global top 10 countires, ranked by overall streaming volume (Total On-Demand Audio + Video), two Latin countries finished in the top five: Mexico was No. 3, with 226 billion streams, only slightly behind India’s 235.5 billion streams; and Brazil was No. 4, with 195.4 billion, far surpassing No. 5 Germany, which had 115 billion streams.
Those rankings are different from the ones on the IFPI’s year-end report for 2024, which uses different methodologies. Still, Brazil and Mexico also made it into the IFPI’s top 10 ranking, with Mexico edging out Australia to land at No. 10. This is excellent news for Latin both as a producer and consumer of repertoire.
These successes in no way mean the Latin industry should get complacent. When it came to U.S. current music (music 18 months old or newer), Latin’s share of the pie actually shrank by 1.1% compared to the first six months of 2024. This is a much smaller loss than that shouldered by R&B/hip hop, but it signals that fans’ tastes are quickly changing, and that the market needs to adapt to continue enticing those listeners.
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