Music analytics platform Viberate, which just created and sold the first-ever live gig NFT in cooperation with Techno veteran UMEK, published a new music report examining the fastest rising genres in the year that pressed pause on the live event industry. As the data shows, three groups proved to be better prepared for facing the “new normal”: Pop, Hip Hop and Latin artists.
The report pinpoints and examines the music genres that increased their fanbases on Spotify, YouTube and Instagram the most in 2020, calculated from the number of followers accumulated by the top 1,000 fastest-rising artists on each platform.
YouTube proved to be the platform where rising Hip Hop and Latin artists are catching up to Pop stars the fastest. Combined, Latin and Hip Hop artists beat Pop handily. Rising Latin artists were the only genre group that got more new YouTube followers in 2020 than in 2019 (their fanbase increased by a total of 153M in 2019, compared to 172M in 2020).
Latin artists also overtook Rockers by the number of new Spotify followers. When it comes to the fastest-rising musicians on Spotify, Pop artists are still the winners, followed by Hip Hop artists.
Instagram remains Pop’s playground. The top 1,000 fastest-rising artists on Instagram gained 1.66B new followers (the most of all the platforms) in total. Of those, 56% went to Pop artists, 21.8% to Hip Hop artists and 15.1% to Latin artists.
Where in the world are the rising artists coming from? Rising Pop stars have the most diverse background: 19% are from the United States and 13% from South Korea, highlighting the rise of K-Pop. On the other hand, 51% of rising Hip Hop artists are from the US – as Rappers mostly make music in their native language, English proves to be a competitive advantage. Even though Reggaeton has gone almost mainstream, Latin artists are still bound to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries (with the addition of the US).
Pop’s big advantage is that the top rising artists come from all over the world, while the top Hip Hop and Latin performers are more geographically bound.
Download the full report HERE.
