Bad Bunny, ‘Despacito’ and the End of English as Pop’s Global Currency: Manuel Abud on Latin Music’s Transformation
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- Manuel Abud, CEO of the Latin Recording Academy, opened the 2026 Golden Melody Festival conference in Taipei with a keynote titled "The Rise of Latin Music: From Regional Niche to Global Force," arguing "Latin music" is not a single genre but an umbrella term—much like "Asian music"—encompassing diverse cultures and sounds.
- Latin music reaches nearly 900 million people worldwide, performed primarily in Spanish and Portuguese, and has become one of the fastest-growing sectors of the global music industry through streaming.
- Abud mapped three evolutionary stages: timeless classics including "Bésame Mucho" (1940), "Mambo No. 5," "The Girl from Ipanema," and "La Bamba"; immigration-driven crossover stars Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, and Shakira who sang in English, with Martin's "Cup of Life" at the 1999 Grammys as the first real US breakthrough; and the streaming era launched by Luis Fonsi's all-Spanish "Despacito" in 2017.
- Bad Bunny opened the 65th Grammy Awards in 2023, won Album of the Year at the 2026 Grammys with a fully Spanish-language record, and performed at the recent Super Bowl—trajectory Abud called the clearest proof of the transformation.
- Abud said streaming has unlocked European growth beyond the traditional US diaspora markets (Puerto Ricans in New York, Cubans in Miami), and argued cross-cultural collaboration—rather than linguistic compromise—will define Latin music's next phase as genre lines blur.
Why it matters: The Latin Recording Academy's most powerful new data point is a fully Spanish-language Album of the Year. For artists and A&R teams weighing whether to translate for global reach, Bad Bunny's Grammy, Super Bowl, and chart dominance reset the calculus—and Abud's signal that Europe, not just US diaspora markets, is the next unlocked growth zone gives labels a concrete roadmap beyond the US.
