Young people prefer music in Spanish
Millennials grew up listening to the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys, and any group that wanted to be cool in the 90s had to sing in English. Generation Z, however, has barely sung in this language: Now what is popular are songs in Spanish.
Everything indicates that the blame for this boom, which has an echo throughout the world, lies with songs like Despacito or Súbeme la radio. That is, at apogee of urban music, a revolution that is already compared to the Movida eighties.
Spotify, the Swedish streaming music platform, supports these claims with data that seemed unthinkable a decade ago, as these rhythms have traditionally been more underground. “ Spotify has given me the opportunity to advance my career without the need for media, since it is still not so easy to enter them, both on television and on radio. They still don't take us so much into account, therefore, Spotify has allowed many artists to make a career for themselves and live from music", explained Rels B, one of the greats of the genre in our country.
Maikel Delacalle, another of the most relevant artists of this style in Spanish, also points out that this genre has changed the musical panorama, something that the data confirms: urban music has seen a 44% increase in streams since 2017, year in which the already mentioned Despacito, by Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee; Súbeme la radio, by Enrique Iglesias or Mala mujer, by C. Tangana, were a complete success. Thus, in just two years, Spaniards have listened to urban music on Spotify for a total of 63,150 million minutes, which is equivalent to 120,000 years listening to music without stopping.
The platform indicates that the increase is due to the fact that these ways of consuming music are allowing artists to reach new audiences. C. Tangana, in fact, points out that it has been his main means of growth: "Years ago I saw clearly that streaming would be the next thing," he says. "Now anyone in any part of the world can listen to me, and that's a beast," agrees Mala Rodríguez.
THE POWER OF PLAYLISTS
In this new musical universe, the role of the radio DJ has been replaced by that of the playlists proposed by Spotify, which greet the listener every time they open the application. “Thanks to them, our users discover new music easily and give artists the chance to be heard by more than 232 million people around the world ”, says Federica Tremolada, General Manager of Spotify for Southern and Eastern Europe.
In fact, since 2017, Listening to urban music produced by Spanish artists has grown by 80% outside our borders , while here we prefer, in this order, the one created in our country (28.8%) , followed by the American one (20.1%) , the Puerto Rican one (15.3%) , the Colombian one (6.9%) and the English (6.2%). By genre, reggaeton (52.11%) and trap (27.29%) win, followed by hip hop (15.40%) and R&B (5.2%).
THE LISTENER PROFILE
As revealed by the Swedish platform, urban music in Spain has as its majority public the young people between 18 and 29 years old , among which 57% of listeners correspond to men and 42% to women (1% of users with undefined gender) . They live, above all, in Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, Valencia, Galicia, Canary Islands, Basque Country, Castilla y León, Balearic Islands and Castilla-La Mancha , all Communities where the preferred style is reggaeton.
Of course, Cantabria, Ceuta, Melilla and Navarra seem to be the most enthusiastic about the genre, while R&B triumphs in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands; rap in the Canary Islands; the Latin trap in Andalusia and the Spanish trap in Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Galicia, La Rioja and Murcia. The rest of the communities -Aragon, the Basque Country, Madrid, the Principality of Asturias and Valencia- have at Spanish hip hop as favorite genre.
And what are our favorite playlists? According to the platform data, Dance Reggaeton, Mopping and Urban Radar They are some of the most followed in our country, and all of them have a strong component of themes made in Spain. And the origin, in this case, matters: according to musical experts such as Alizzz, producer and artist of the genre, the urban music from here has certain peculiarities with respect to that from other countries: "It's somewhat more sober, with a more marked influence of urban and pop from the United Kingdom and the United States."
For César Lores, A&R at Sony Music Entertainment "in Spain we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the countries by having artists who adapt their music to different local and international trends like flamenco, afro or even dancehall, among others”. Among all these artists, one more selection: those of the most listened to in Spain, a list that begins with Don Patricio, followed by C. Tangana, Natos y Waor, Rels B, Alizz, Maikel Delacalle, Ayax y Prok, DELLAFUENTE, Mala Rodríguez, Kidd Keo, Omar Montes, Fernandocosta, Bad Gyal, SFDK and Recycled J.