Music streams hit 4 trillion in 2023. Country and global acts — and Taylor Swift — fueled the growth

LOS ANGELES — Listened to more music last year? You’re not alone.

The global music industry surpassed 4 trillion streams in 2023, a new single-year record, Luminate’s 2023 Year-End Report found.

Global streams were also up 34% from last year, reflective of an increasingly international music marketplace.

Stateside, three genres saw the biggest growth in 2023: country (23.7%), Latin (which encompasses all Latin musical genres, up 24.1%) and world (a catchall that includes J-pop, K-pop and Afrobeats, up 26.2%.)

It seems that more Americans are listening to non-English music. By the end of 2023, Luminate found that Spanish-language music’s share of the top 10,000 songs streamed in the U.S. grew 3.8%, and English-language music’s share dropped 3.8%.

Under the Latin umbrella, regional Mexican music saw massive growth. The genre term — which encompasses mariachi, banda, corridos, norteño, sierreño and other styles — grew 60% in U.S. on-demand audio streams, accounting for 21.9 billion. Four of the six Latin artists to break 1 billion audio streams in the U.S. were Mexican acts: Peso Pluma, Eslabon Armado, Junior H, and Fuerza Regida, who also placed in the top 125 artists streamed.

Armado and Peso Pluma’s “Ella Baila Sola” surpassed a billion streams on Spotify in less than a year and became the first regional Mexican Top 10 hit on Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100, peaking at No. 4 — later, Bad Bunny’s collaboration with Grupo Frontera, “Un x100to,” hit No. 5.

As for the…