Afrobeats, K-pop, and Latin music exploded in a record year for the U.S. streaming market, but Swift dominated

Taylor Swift, September 2023 (Theo Wargo/Getty Images for MTV)

Taylor Swift accounted for 1.79 percent of U.S. on-demand streams in a record year for global streaming, the data provider Luminate reports in its 2023 roundup. Swift’s dominance—which translates to roughly one in 78 of all on-demand U.S. streams—comes as English-language music streams dropped by 10 percent globally, according to the report.

In the United States, Afrobeats, K-pop, and Latin music were the fastest-growing genres, each ballooning by more than a fifth. The total number of audio and video streams around the world grew by a third, crossing the four trillion mark for the first time.

Within the United States, the relatively young iteration of regional Mexican music showed the swiftest expansion of any subcategory, with 60 percent growth driven by listeners on the West Coast and in the Southwest. Hip-hop remains the biggest streaming genre in the States, though streams categorized as current R&B/hip-hop fell by 7 percent while catalog streams grew by 11 percent.

And while the average spend on music streaming increased in the States, Gen Z listeners reported spending 11 percent less per month than in 2022. Read the full report via Luminate.