By Ricardo Lezama 
Due to Univision’s heavy cultural affinity and relation to superstars from Puerto Rico, Colombia, and the Caribbean, the more prominent artists within the United States have always penetrated the mainstream Spanish media. As of late, however, Mexican music has now emerged as the most widely consumed Spanish language music in the United States. Current numbers suggest the influence is broader than the US Southwest too.
Inbound marketing towards Mexicans has been a huge deal for several decades now as monied groups seek to both sell and direct the attention of Mexican individuals. Luminate is currently selling hocus pocus business intelligence on the topic of what Mexican regional music listeners think about.
For instance, consumption of Mexican regional music in the United States rose 42.1% so far this year, from Jan 1 through May 25, according to Luminate (once named Nielsen). The genre, composed of banda, corridos, norteño, mariachi, and other subgenres, logged 5.81 million album-equivalent units (AUs) in the first 21 weeks of 2023 versus 4.09 million AUs during the same period last year.
AUs combine album sales as well as song sales and streams converted into album units. That outstrips Latin music as a whole’s gains (+23,1%), as well as country music (+21,7%), dance/electronic (+15,5%), rock (+12,4%) and pop (+10,3%), plus the global market (+13,4%). Only K-pop—up 49.4% YoY as Korean music companies partner with U.S. record labels to further penetrate the U.S. market—has performed better than Mexican regional. However, number to number, there seems to be a higher potential ROI if simply looking at the sheer number of Mexican affiliated individuals in the United States, which hovers around 40 million people.
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