An aerial shot of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photo Credit: Andrea Leopardi
Brazil isn’t the only South American nation turning in significant recorded music growth, as the Argentinian music industry expanded by 8.2% in 2023.
That’s according to a newly released Spanish-language report from the Cámara Argentina de Productores de Fonogramas y Videogramas (CAPIF) trade body, which based its calculations on “constant values” for the Argentine peso.
Diving into the 70-page resource, digital made up 74.6 percent of Argentina’s 2023 industry revenue, marking something of a contrast with Brazil (where nearly all recorded revenue derives from streaming) as well as the U.S. (where 86 percent of revenue came from streaming and downloads in H1 2024).
By category, besides the nearly 75 percent behind digital, the Argentinian recorded music space generated 8.2 percent of its 2023 revenue from physical products such as vinyl, 16.4 percent from public performances (collected by AADI-CAPIF), and the remaining 0.8 percent from sync and other sources.
A breakdown of Argentinian music industry revenue by source, 2010-2023; red represents physical revenue, orange reflects digital (chiefly streaming) revenue, dark blue shows public performance revenue, and the small light-blue section highlights revenue classified as sync and other. Photo Credit: CAPIF
Elaborating on those points, vinyl, notwithstanding its ongoing global resurgence, produced 57.5 percent of Argentina’s physical sales during 2023, against 42.3 percent for CDs and the remaining 0.2 percent for music DVDs, the breakdown shows. Though vinyl’s share has increased from 33.8 percent in 2019, it’s still down from 2021 (61 percent).
On the streaming side, 64.5 percent of the category’s revenue derived from subscriptions last year, CAPIF indicated.
Ad-supported audio listening, for its part, kicked in 22.1 percent of the sum, with 13.2 percent attributed to adverts on video streaming, per the resource. The percentages, and particularly that attached to subscription revenue, have been largely steady across the past half of a decade.
By platform, Spotify last year commanded a sizable market-share lead across all age groups (including north of 60 percent of those between 16 and 44) in Argentina, followed by YouTube Music and then distant competitors Amazon Music and SoundCloud, CAPIF noted.
Shifting the focus to listener preferences, Argentina-based artists’ releases accounted for 53 percent of recorded revenue in 2023, against 30 percent for Spanish-language projects from international acts and 17 percent for global works recorded in non-Spanish languages, according to the analysis.
Argentina’s on-demand streams, in thousands, for releases from domestic acts (red), Spanish-language tracks from international artists (orange), and non-Spanish-language works from global creators (blue). Photo Credit: CAPIF
Regarding the global artists that made a commercial splash in the country of about 46 million last year, CAPIF ranked Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” first on the appropriate list, followed by Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” Jimin’s “Like Crazy,” “Cold Heart” by Dua Lipa as well as Elton John, and Arctic Monkeys’ “I Wanna Be Yours,” respectively.