On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: six geese-a-laying. But they soon stopped laying about and looked lively when I told them what an exciting year it’s been for the truly global music industry.
This isn’t a 2023 trend: it’s been coming for some time now, with Latin American and K-Pop artists making their global breakthroughs in previous years – no English-language songs required. But 2023 crystallised this trend, and shone the spotlight on some other aspects too.
K-Pop’s global ambitions
The western appetite for K-Pop is well established now – Blackpink’s world tour was the most recent proof – and that is fuelling the ambitions of the big K-Pop music companies too.
Hybe’s biggest act (BTS) may be on hiatus, but a steady stream of hits from the solo members has kept its momentum going. But on the corporate side, it acquired US hip-hop label Quality Control and was rumoured to be raising hundreds of millions of dollars for further deals.
One that didn’t come off was its attempt to take a stake in rival SM Entertainment, which harbours its own global ambitions. The sense was of an industry consolidating and gearing up to step up another notch – including with non-Korean genres.
Hybe’s expansion into Latin America late in the year was a key pointer to that, and to the fact that K-Pop’s next stage of global growth may come from acquisitions and collaborations outside the traditional Anglo music markets.
Afrobeats and Amapiano on fire
Real momentum is building behind two of the biggest genres/scenes in Africa: Afrobeats and Amapiano. Annual Afrobeats Spotify streams have grown from 2bn in 2017 to 13.5bn in 2022, while key labels like Mavin Records are well into the billions of streams across all services.
Amapiano from South Africa, too, is finding a global audience, both through the artists making it, and its influence on a growing number of western acts, keen to hop onto new musical trends as quickly as possible.
Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube Music are among the global DSPs throwing their weight behind these African genres, and their growth may open the way for other African music scenes to follow suit in 2024.
Latin America builds global stars
Latin America’s biggest stars are now the global music industry’s biggest stars too. Bad Bunny had the biggest album globally in 2022 according to the IFPI, and alongside compatriot J Balvin he hit 13 in YouTube’s ‘billion views club’ this year too.
Shakira set a new Spotify record for LatAm artists, while Peso Pluma was the continent’s latest breakout success story, as part of the rise of Música Mexicana. And Latin music revenues continue to outgrow the rest of the industry in their biggest international market: the US.
Having proved their ability to win fans over while still singing or rapping in their own language, Latin artists’ next frontier may be collaborations with other non-Anglo scenes: K-Pop, Afrobeats, Mandopop, independent Indian hip-hop and more.
China’s music economy swings to streams
For years, China’s biggest music-streaming company didn’t actually make most of its money from music streaming. Two thirds of Tencent Music’s revenues came from its ‘social entertainment’ services like karaoke and livestreaming.
That ratio has flipped though: with livestreaming under regulatory pressure, streaming is now two thirds of Tencent’s business – thanks also in part to good growth in its number of paying users. It now has 103 million people paying for subscriptions and/or digital albums, and rival NetEase Cloud Music has another 41.8 million.
China broke into the world’s top five recorded-music markets in 2022 for the first time, according to the IFPI, dislodging France. It’s now cementing that position with paid music.
India looks for a subscriptions boost
India’s music industry has long harboured its own ambitions to break into the top 10 global recorded-music markets, but it’s making slow progress. The main reason is that the country’s streaming services are struggling to convert free listeners into paying subscribers.
Spotify may have tripled its number of Indian users in the last two years, but in October it added restrictions to its free tier in an effort to persuade more of them to pay. India was also one of the countries where ByteDance shut down the free tier of its Resso streaming service this year, ahead of its transition into TikTok Music.
Meanwhile, the big Indian DSPs’ failure to grow their subscribers fast enough has challenged their very economics, with industry body IMI admitting some may simply disappear. 2024 will be a crucial year in proving whether India can become a significant market for paid streaming.
Global majors seek local momentum
One of the very clear trends of 2023 (and previous years) is the desire of the global major labels to secure leading positions in the industry’s emerging markets.
This year we have seen UMG and WMG in particular acquiring companies, signing strategic partnerships and announcing high-profile local artist signings in India, China and Africa, building the networks that will secure their foothold in these regions.
This is a twofold strategy: partly about getting their international catalogues into these markets, but also about signing (or having access to) local talent that has the potential to find an audience globally.
As Afrobeats, Indian hip-hop, Mandopop and other genres continue to widen their reach internationally, so we will see more of these deals for the majors.
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