In 2023, we witnessed a record-breaking 25 Latin songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 year-end list, and artists such as Bad Bunny, J Balvin, and Karol G consistently rank among the most-streamed globally. Gone are the days when the English Speaking world relegated music in Spanish to their respective “Spanish Language Stations”. Now, lyrics in Spanish are learned verbatim without a clue as to what the translation could be. Hip Hop songs frequently switch between English and Spanish verses as well as MCs. Latin artists are not only in style, they are the style.
However, a 2023 Music Economics Report from Duetti, a music financing platform for independent artists, reveals that Latin artists’ revenue is the lowest, requiring nearly three times the streams of country artists for the same $1.
While it may seems that these artists must be raking in the dough through all their music, Independent artists must generate a staggering 5,000,000 streams annually to make the US federal minimum wage. Additionally, Latin artists incurred the highest distribution fees this year, revealing a noteworthy financial challenge within the Latin music industry. Since 2022, earnings per stream for independent Latin artists has declined by a whopping 21% .
Something tells me these statistics will be hard to ignore the next time we jam out to the next Karol G song on Spotify.