Bad Bunny’s leading Latin music’s charge in consumption…

Latin music has posted a healthy increase in audio consumption album equivalents in the U.S. in the first six months of 2020, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data‘s midyear report, with the 26-year-old Puerto Rican Latin trap and reggeaton singer earning top artist honors.

Overall, audio consumption of Latin music grew to 14.56 million units in the first six months of 2020, up 15.9% from the 12.6 million units registered for 2019’s midyear total. That number helped the overall growth of the genre.

Following R&B/Hip-Hop, Latin was the greatest percentage point gainer among the large genres, now comprising 4.09% market share of the total U.S. music market. That’s up from 3.86% at midyear 2019.

Latin’s market share growth comes despite the fact that, like other genres, it has suffered a decline in its weekly streaming average since the economic shutdown beginning the week of March 13. Latin saw its average weekly on-demand count drop from 1.182 billion prior to the advent of the pandemic to 1.143 billion average weekly streams from the pandemic period onward through July 2, a 3.3% drop.

Like other genres, Latin’s physical sales was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, with physical album sales dropping 48.7% to 212,000 copies from 414,000 in the first half of 2019. As with other genres, Latin enjoyed a digital sales bump with download albums growing 11.7% to 248,000 copies from 222,000 the year before.

That means overall, album sales fell 27.6% to 461,000 from 636,000 copies, and digital track sales fell 32.6% to 3.35 million copies, versus 4.83 million in the six-month year earlier period.

In terms of top artists for the first six months of the year, Bad Bunny was king. His YHLQMDLG became the highest-charting all-Spanish-language album in the history of the Billboard 200 when it reached No. 2 on the March 14 tally.

It’s also the sixth-most-consumed album of the year and the lone Latin title in the top 10. Interesting fact: When Bad Bunny’s Las Que No Iban a Salir debuted on the May 14 Top Latin Albums chart at No. 1, Bad Bunny also held the No. 2 (YHLQMDLG) and No. 3 (X100PRE) slots.

Following Bad Bunny in consumption for the first six months of the year is Ozuna, and in third place, newcomer Natanael Cano. 

In terms of songs, the most-consumed track for the first six months of the year was Karol G and Nicki Minaj’s “Tusa,” followed by Bad Bunny’s “Yo Perreo Sola.”

At the midyear mark, Bad Bunny gets an artist credit, either as a solo or in collaboration, in seven of the top 10 most streamed Latin songs.