Regional Mexican Music Is Crossing Borders and Going Global. Here’s How It Happened Maria Sherman and Berenice Bautista - The Associated Press
go to original January 26, 2024

Carin Leon performs at the Latin American Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. (John Locher/AP)

Leila Cobo, Billboard’s chief content officer for Latin music coverage, always believed Mexican music was going to be huge in the U.S., given its large Mexican American population.

“But I never, in a million years, thought it was going to become so global,” she says.

For Cobo, one of the factors contributing to regional Mexican music’s global reach is streaming, which democratized listening habits and allowed listeners who might not otherwise come across this music to fall in love with it.

On Spotify, Mexican music grew 400% worldwide over the last five years, according to Uriel Waizel, lead editor at Spotify Mexico. And on YouTube, Peso Pluma bested Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny to become 2023’s most streamed artist on the platform.

In addition to streaming, Cobo points at a large population of Mexican descent in the U.S. interested in exploring the music of their ancestors — and a new generation of musicians embracing the genre but mixing it up with rap, reggaeton and electronic instrumentation, invigorating it in the process.

“It went from being music that was a little bit old-fashioned,” Cobo says. “But now I see a movement. And I think that is exciting.”

Waizel says that while Mexican music is centuries old, “current Mexican music is breaking because it is the music that young people listen to.”

Spotify confirmed that last month, 56% of those listening to Latin American artists were under 30. In Mexico, that jumps to 60% of listeners.

“Before, parents taught regional music to their children, but now the young people are the ones who are teaching their parents music,” says DannyLux, a 19-year-old singer of sad sierreño, a novelty subgenre that surfaced almost five years ago. “Regional music is reaching the heights of reggaeton, which was not seen before.”

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