Pop music's bias towards English is fading, says Spotify
Mar 12, 2026
Washington [US], March 12: English language music is losing its stranglehold on the charts, according to new data from music streaming giant Spotify.
The company says songs in 16 different languages, including Spanish, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic, appeared in its Global Top 50 last year. That's more than double the figure from 2020.
Bad Bunny, who sings exclusively in Spanish, was the most-streamed artist in the world. And Brit Award winner Rosalía sings in 14 dialects on her latest album, Lux.
Spotify said Brazilian Funk was the fastest-growing genre in the world, with audiences up by 36%. K-Pop saw a 31% increase, and Trap Latino was up by 29%.
All of those genres earned more than $100m (£74.5m) in royalties from Spotify last year, the company said.
English still dominates the charts, with 14 of last year's Top 20 best-selling albums sung exclusively in the language, according to the music industry body the IFPI.
But South Korean bands such as Stray Kids, Enhypen and Seventeen all featured in the list, as did Japanese rock group Mrs Green Apple, as fans increasingly explore music outside the typical paradigms of rock and pop.
According to a 2021 analysis of listening behaviour published in the journal Nature, this trend has been accelerating since 2017.
Not coincidentally, that's the same year that streaming overtook CDs and vinyl as the music industry's biggest source of income.Last week, Spotify's most-played chart included songs from Bad Bunny and Rauw Alejandro (Puerto Rico), Nadhif Basalamah (Indonesia), Tyla (South Africa), Tems (Nigeria), Ryan Castro (Colombia), El Bogueto, Peso Pluma, Neton Vega and Fuerza Regida (Mexico), Blackpink, Jung Kook and Jin (South Korea)
Source: Qatar Tribune
