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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world
Americas+1 212 318 2000
EMEA+44 20 7330 7500
Asia Pacific+65 6212 1000
Almost 20 years after bringing reggaeton to the mainstream with the hit song Gasolina, Daddy Yankee planned to retire with a final tour of 26 shows in 2022. But after he put tickets on sale for a Los Angeles show in July, his plan changed. The tickets sold out in half an hour, and his promoter, Henry Cardenas, received an influx of calls from all over the Western hemisphere.
“People started calling from every country,” Cardenas said. “I wasn’t thinking of going to El Salvador or Guatemala.”
What was supposed to be a modest farewell trip turned into one of the biggest tours of the year. In the last five months, the Puerto Rican rapper has performed 86 shows, grossing more than $140 million. Along the way, he made more money than all but seven acts, including concert mainstays such as Garth Brooks, the Rolling Stones and Lady Gaga.
Daddy Yankee is one of three Latin musicians to rank among the year’s 25 biggest tours, a sign of the genre’s growing power. During the first half of the year, Latin music accounted for more than 6% of all consumption in the US, according to Luminate, a jump of 34% from just two years ago.
It’s easy to write this off as the Bad Bunny effect. The Puerto Rican trap star had the biggest tour of 2022 and was the year’s most popular streaming act. But that would overlook the depth of talent and fandom coming from Latin America. Latin acts accounted for 22 of the 200 biggest tours in the world this year. They also claimed eight of the top 25 spots in Bloomberg’s latest Pop Star Power Rankings.
Cardenas, who hails from Colombia and moved to the US in 1972 to go to school in Chicago, has been promoting Latin acts for 46 years. He got his start by hiring DJs to spin disco records at parties for students at colleges in the Chicago area.
He was a key figure during the boom in Latin music that took place around the turn of the century when pop singers like Marc Anthony, Enrique Iglesias and Shakira gained a following in the US. In 2005, he promoted Daddy Yankee’s first tour in Latin America and the US to promote the album Barrio Fino. Back then, artists had to travel to New York, Chicago and Mexico City to promote their work and had a hard time reaching audiences outside of those major urban areas. Reggaeton – and Latin music in general – didn’t sustain the breakthrough on a global stage.
That’s changed in the past few years, as evidenced by another Daddy Yankee track – “Despacito,” the most popular song in the world during 2017. Singers and rappers such as J Balvin and Karol G now rank among the most popular stars in the world.
Global distribution has helped. Whereas acts once needed to compete for shelf space in Walmart and a spot on radio playlists, any artist can now upload a song to Spotify.
“The big difference is the digital era,” Cardenas said. “When Daddy Yankee and Ozuna come out with a record, it goes global immediately.”
On this tour, Daddy Yankee has performed in a dozen cities in Mexico, nine more than they initially planned. He sold out a stadium in Mexico City five nights in a row (after having originally planned for only a single performance). And he’s played in a lot of US cities that he had never visited before.
While Daddy Yankee recorded the first reggaeton hit to cross over outside of the Spanish-speaking world, Bad Bunny has now set a new, higher bar. The 28-year-old sold more than two million tickets, and his tour is on pace to gross more than $430 million – a new record.
With Daddy Yankee retiring and Bad Bunny taking a year off, it will be up to a new artist next year to step up and keep Latin music’s momentum going strong.
Source: Pollstar, Spotify, Nielsen Music/MRC, CrowdTangle and YouTube
Design, development and data by Christopher Cannon, Julian Burgess and Alex McIntyre.
Methodology:
Bloomberg ranked the world’s most influential pop stars based on six criteria:
- Trailing three-month gross revenues from live shows
- Trailing 30-day ticket sales for live shows
- Trailing four-week album sales
- Trailing four-week digital song streams
- Trailing 30-day total interactions on Instagram
- Trailing four-week YouTube views
Data for live shows is provided by Pollstar, which ranks the top 100 artists by average gross revenues received per show and top 75 artists by average number of tickets sold per show. Both datasets are released on a weekly basis, with Bloomberg using the final weekly releases for that calendar month. From this universe of artists for this date, Bloomberg calculates the total gross revenues over the trailing three months and total ticket sales for the previous 30 days.
Album sales data is provided by Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Figures are released weekly for the Billboard top 200 albums based on “total activity,” which is defined as albums, track-equivalent albums and audio on-demand streaming-equivalent albums combined. To construct the universe of eligible artists for that month’s ranking, Bloomberg includes any artist who is in the top 100 for any given week. Bloomberg then sums each artist’s total activity throughout the month. Figures for a given week are included as long as the final day of that week occurs during the calendar month.
Digital-song streaming data is provided by Spotify. Figures are released weekly for the top 200 songs. To construct the universe of eligible artists for that month’s ranking, Bloomberg includes any artist who is in the top 100 for any given week. Bloomberg then sums each artist’s total number of streams throughout the month. Figures for a given week are included as long as the final day of that week occurs during the calendar month.
Instagram data is provided by CrowdTangle. Interactions are measured over the course of the calendar month, from the start of the first day of the month through the end of the last day of the month. The top 100 artists qualify for inclusion in the ranking.
YouTube releases weekly data on its top 100 most-viewed artists and videos. Bloomberg uses artists from the category of “Global - Top Songs” to construct the universe of performers who qualify for the ranking. Bloomberg then sums each artist’s total views throughout the month. Figures for a given week are included as long as the final day of that week occurs during the calendar month.
For any given show, song or album that involves a collaboration of multiple artists, each artist is considered as a separate entity and credited with the total number of gross revenues, ticket sales, song streams, or views associated with the collaborative effort. If an act is an established duo or trio, the act is treated as a single entity. Artists who participate on a soundtrack album (as part of “various artists”) are not included. For March, April and May 2020 rankings, collaborating artists were not included for Spotify and YouTube data. They are included in rankings from June 2020 onward.
Comedians, models and other artists who appear in the top 100 of the six metrics (top 75 for 30-day ticket sales) but do not have musical careers are eliminated from the final universe. Each artist’s ranking within the six variables reflects their position among this final list of qualified artists. An artist with no ranking for one of the six metrics means they did not appear within the top 100 (top 75 for 30-day ticket sales) at any point during the previous month.
With the universe established, each artist is ranked on each metric. Artists are then scored on a scale of 0 to 100 for each metric based on their relative position within the metric’s ranking. The best-performing artist receives a score of 100, the worst-performing artist a score of 0, while all other artists are scored proportionally based on their position between the best- and worst-performing artists. The six metrics are equally weighted and averaged for a final score between 0 and 100.
Note: Beginning with April edition of the ranking, two changes were introduced:
1) Most artists have canceled or rescheduled tours due to the coronavirus, so there is no new data on ticket sales or box office grosses. It’s unclear when that will change. The four remaining metrics are weighted at 25% each in this new version.
2) For data that is released weekly, the ranking now includes any data whose week ends in the given calendar month. Previously, a week’s data was used if it was released in the calendar month.
