Midway through the year, a few music trends have become apparent: global music streaming is on the rise, Latin music has become the fastest-growing streaming genre in the United States, and physical album variants – multiple releases of the same thing – are on the rise.
The global music industry surpassed 1 trillion streams in one calendar year at the fastest pace ever, according to Luminate’s 2024 Midyear Report. The number was reached 10 days faster than in 2023.
Global streams are also up 15.1%, with 2.29 trillion on-demand audio streams, up from 1.99 trillion at this point last year.
People everywhere are streaming more music, and in the US, Latin music has become the fastest growing streaming genre, up 15.1% from this time last year. Latin music streaming is also the most current, with 35% of all Latin streams in the US being for albums released in the last 18 months. Compare that to rock music, where 70.5% of streams in the US come from deep catalogues: releases that are five years old or older.
No Latin artists have been included in the top 10 albums or songs of the year so far, but Bad Bunny, Peso Pluma, Fuera Regida, Karol G, Rauw Alejandro, Aventura and Carín León are among the top 200 most streamed artists in the U.S. for the first half of 2024.
Last year, Latin music was among the top three fastest-growing genres in the U.S., says Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations. The figures from 2024 illustrate a continuation of that trend.
“Much of that growth has been driven by the continued rise of regional Mexican music, the largest Latin music subgenre so far this year, with more than 13 billion U.S. on-demand audio streams,” Marconette told The Associated Press .
And while Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny remains “the largest streaming Latin music artist in the U.S.,” he says the three other Latin artists who crossed more than 100 million U.S. on-demand audio streams in the first half of 2024 are regional Mexican acts are. : Pluma, Fuerza Regida and Junior H.
It’s not just the streaming economy that’s on the rise.
Physical variants of albums – multiple releases of the same album, sometimes with different bonus tracks or a different design – have steadily increased in popularity since 2020.
In 2024, U.S. physical album sales rose 3.8% from last year, from 23.8 million to 24.7 million, the data and analytics company said in its report.
But it’s not just any artist making more physical variants of their releases. The artists who have had the top 10 best-selling albums so far this year also had the highest average number of variants. This includes Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Beyoncé, as well as K-pop acts such as Tomorrow x Together, Ateez and TWICE.
In 2024, the average number of variants for a top 10 best-selling album is 22: seven different vinyl releases, 13 CDs and two cassettes.
For albums in the top 101 – 500, there are only about five variants per release, and for 501 – 1,000 there are an average of four physical variants.
“We have seen a consistent trend in recent years of chart-topping albums using more and more physical variants in their album release campaigns,” says Marconette.
“However, there is also criticism within the artist and fan communities about the environmental impact of producing so many physical products,” he says, suggesting that there is “a clear demand for recycled materials and other sustainability initiatives in this area. ”
___
An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified 2.29 trillion on-demand audio streams as 2.29 trillion stream-equivalent albums.
___
This story corrects the title of Jaime Marconette, Luminate’s vice president of music insights and industry relations.
