According to the Luminate Year-End Report of 2023, a mere 33% of millennials who appreciate Reggae and Afrobeats actually prefer attending concerts and other entertainment events linked to the culture.
The Report released on Wednesday January 10, 2024 by the Billboard sales tracker company comes two months after Inner Circle founder Ian Lewis lamented that roots reggae has lost its stronghold on young concert goers in the US, making way for a new breed of Neo-reggae acts mainly based on the West Coast of America.
“They are targeting the demographic that will come out and listen to what they are playing. They call it reggae, and we might not feel it the same way they do, but it’s appealing to their demographic,” he said of the neo-reggae bands like Stick Figure, Slightly Stoopid, SOJA and others in an interview with Anthony Miller of ER, Lewis says the rising California reggae scene is attracting audiences willing to pay for concert tickets.
Afrobeats/Afropop, Gospel, Hip-Hop/Rap, Jazz, R&B share a similar stats according to Luminate’s survey- that is just over 33% of Millennials who listen to those genres are more likely to choose entertainment content that helps connect with their culture/identity/values. Reggae’s listening population is among the least in the US but globally reggae is the tenth most listened genre for two years in a row according to the IFPI engaging music report.
In the US there is also a growing breed of intelligent multi-lingual music aficionados dubbed by Luminate ” Multilingual Music Listeners.” This emerging market segment consisted of music people who listen to more than one language of music such as Spanish of Korean K-Pop, and 63% of them are Gen Zs and 65% of them are Millennials. They “listen to new music to experience new cultures & perspectives” according to Luminate.
This explains the rise of Afrobeats and Latin music genres in the North American country and corresponds with the 2023 IFPI Global Music Report which found that Latin Music saw an increased of 25% in the region. A far way from the 1970s when Latin and African music had a hard time breaking in the US because of what Island Records founder Chris Blackwell says was a language barrier for acts like Fela Kute.
“For starters reggae is pretty much in English and a lot of the African artists didn’t speak English,” Blackwell told Yahoo! on the reason Reggae worked earlier in the US before African acts.
On the subject of Africa, “Calm Down” by Rema and Selena Gomez was the 5th most consumed song in the US with 4.811 million Songs Sales and On Demand Streams for 2023. The song earned 0.457 billion On-Demand Audio streams and 384.2 million On-Demand video streams during the year. 159,000 pure copies were sold.
Afrobeats is the 9th largest growing sub-genre in the US with just over 2 billion new ODA streams in 2023. Rock, Hip Hop and R&B make up the top 3, with rock surpassing 15 billion new ODA streams.
Outside of Middle East and North Africa, Afrobeats’ top 100 songs saw its highest number of streams in Luxenbourg, Netherlands, France, UK and Portugal.
Streaming has penetrate the Nigerian and Kenyan music market at 98% and 99% respectively with the majority of citizens in these African countries discovering their music via social media, television and from friends. However in Kenya the streaming local genre is Kenyan Gospel while in the home of Burna Boy, Davido, Asake and Tiwa Savage Afrobeats dominate Nigeria’s 213 million strong population.
Other findings in the report showed that in 2023, global music streams reached a historic 4 trillion, marking a new annual record, according to Luminate. The growth was fueled by country, Latin, and world music genres, experiencing increases of 23.7%, 24.1%, and 26.2%, respectively. Interestingly, Spanish-language music gained ground in the U.S., growing by 3.8%, while English-language music’s share declined by the same margin.
Arenovski
Within the Latin category, regional Mexican music saw a remarkable 60% growth in on-demand audio streams in the U.S., with artists like Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado, Junior H, and Fuerza Regida achieving significant success. Taylor Swift, named Time’s 2023 Person of the Year, represented 1.79% of the U.S. market and dominated the top albums chart, accounting for five of the top 10 albums. Despite these successes, hip-hop maintained its dominance, constituting 25.5% of all U.S. music streams, while streams for current R&B and hip-hop acts experienced a 7.1% decrease from 2022, with catalog streams (older material) growing by 11.3%.
Check out the entire 2023 Music Report by Luminate here.
