The Cause and Effect of Latin Music's Growing Global Popularity

This essay examines the reasons behind the growing popularity of Latin music both in the United States and worldwide. It identifies streaming platforms like YouTube and Spotify as key drivers, noting how these platforms, along with social media, amplify the reach and engagement with Latin tracks. The analysis also points to fundamental shifts in the music itself, highlighting the danceable nature of many Latin songs and a focus on appealing to a global audience rather than solely Latin listeners. Strategic collaborations between Latin and English-speaking pop stars, exemplified by the "Despacito" remix featuring Justin Bieber, further contribute to the genre's expanded reach. The essay concludes that the accessibility, engagement, and sharability of Latin music on digital and social platforms have been crucial in its massive global growth and popularity.

Running head: ENGLISH ESSAY
English Essay
Name of the Student
Name of the University

1ENGLISH ESSAY
Introduction
Latin Music can be defined as a genre that is frequently used by the music industry as a
catchall term for any music that originated from Spanish as well as Portuguese speaking areas of
the world that includes Latin America, Spain and Portugal. When it comes to the united state,
Latin music in the music industry is referred to any recording that is sung mostly in Spanish
language. In this essay, the cause behind the increased popularity in U as well as across different
parts of the world will be discussed.
Discussion
In the year 2018, Despacito, a song by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee broke all sorts of
records. The popularity of the Latin song got so high that it remained in the Billboard’s Hot 100
for 16 consecutive weeks. Not only that, the music video in YouTube became the first one to
reach 4 billion views and had achieved the milestone in mere 272 days. In the year 2017, a total
of 19 Spanish tracks made it on the billboard Hot 100 2017. Thus it can be clearly understood
that Latin music is gaining high popularity currently. According to researchers, the chief reason
behind the high popularity of Latin music is streaming (Brill and Mark). Streaming is a huge
factor that as the potential to influence the popularity of Latin music since streaming numbers are
considered to be a large part from which songs are chosen to be in billboard Hot 100. Besides
that, popular global clout platforms like Youtube and spotify has allowed a good number of Latin
track to seep into the upper echelons of the streaming charts. These popular online video sharing
platforms posses the capability to enhance the popularity of any video to a great extent
(Hernandez and Deborah). Besides that the huge popularity of social media platforms like
Facebook, Instagram , Snapchat and others have also helped the tracks to gain more and more

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popularity. Sharing of the YouTube video link in popular websites makes it easier for the global
music lovers to directly go to the youtube page without searching for the song in Google.
Besides that repeated sharing in social media pages further enhanced the views of the music
videos as well as their popularity
According to several researchers, another major reason behind the emerging popularity of
Latin tracks is fundamental changes in the way the business is conducted and in the music itself.
When it comes to the music used in majority of the Latin tracks, they are danceable. This can be
considered as a major key behind the popularity of the mentioned genre since by making one
think with the feet instead of the head, the tracks become language-agonistic. Majority of the
popular Latin tracks like Despacito and Sin Pijama are targeted toward the global audience.
Earlier, Latin music was created keeping in mind the preferences of the Latin audience.
However, currently in is keeping the preferences of global audience in mind while creating
music. Earlier, some of the Latin pops had gained popularity due to their romanticism, heart-
wrenching lyrics along with heavy, string-laden arrangements. Some of the most popular Latin
music of the mentioned era are “Si No Te Hubieras Ido,” “Vuelve” and “El Buen Perdedor".
However, global impact was always the purview of danceable tracks. Some of the danceable
global track that were able to break the barrier of main stream radio back in those era with their
original version includes “Macarena”, “La Camisa Negra” and “Livin La Vida Loca” (Costa et
al.).
Another cause behind the popularity of the Latin music is the active collaboration of the
lanic pop stars with the English pop stars. Collaboration with the local pop starts helped the
lantin singr to raise awareness and enhance the popularity of the origin song. This can be
explained with the help of a example of the song “ Despacito”. In the “Despacito “remix, Justin

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Beiber as well as Beyonce was featured. This tactics has helped the Latin music companies to
drag the American audience who were unaware of the hit track towards the catchy track. Thus it
can be clearly understood that accebility, engagement and sharability of the Latin music on
digital as well as social platforms have allowed for its massive growth as well as popularity on a
global scale.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that streaming in popular video sharing
platforms like youtube and spotify can be considered as one of the chief reason behind the
popularity of Latin Songs. Apart from that, the catchy tune of the Latin track and the fact that
they are danceable are the other two reasons behind its global popularity. Finally, the tremendous
sharing of the tracks through social media platforms can also be considered as a major cause
behind the enhanced popularity.

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Reference list
Brill, Mark. Music of Latin America and the Caribbean. Routledge, 2017.
Costa, Yandre MG, Luiz S. Oliveira, and Carlos N. Silla Jr. "An evaluation of convolutional
neural networks for music classification using spectrograms." Applied soft computing 52 (2017):
28-38.
Hernandez, Deborah Pacini. "Race, ethnicity and the production of Latin/o popular
music." Global Repertoires. Routledge, 2017. 57-72.