Reggaeton is big business. In fact, it is currently the only music genre that can claim to be defining the zeitgeist. Billions of people listen to it; billions of people have never heard of it. And its biggest star, Bad Bunny, is both one of the most popular artists in human history and an unknown entity. There was a time when you would be able to dismiss this phenomenon as western ignorance of foreign cultures, but Bad Bunny has far surpassed the level where language barriers shelter him from English-speaking regions of the world—in this regard, he defines the changing cultural landscape of modern times.
2022 was yet another massive year for the star. He claimed the most streamed spot for a third consecutive year, the first in history to do so. The Puerto Rican rapper was reportedly streamed an absolutely absurd 18.5 billion times. To put that in context, there are only 7.8 billion people on the entire planet, so that’s the equivalent of everyone listening to him 2.3 times. When you consider that there are only roughly 500 million Spanish speakers in the world, the duality of Bad Bunny’s ridiculous popularity and relative anonymity become even more head-scratching on the surface.
For those who don’t know, the reggaeton music that he performs is a danceable genre of Puerto Rican origin. It mixes a persistent Latin rhythmic beat that proves perfectly fitting for twerking – which runs unchanged through many reggaeton tracks – with dancehall musicology and the iconography and production values of hip hop. Most of it is accompanied by rap in Spanish, and the bottom line is a sort of sultry beat with visceral club energy. Ten years ago, if you were in a bar in Latin America, then this would’ve been the sound that the locals were bopping to, but now it has gone global, hit new heights, and is still rising.
These are heights that numerically nobody has ever hit. Why then, does my mother seem to think that Bad Bunny is Roger Rabbit’s nickname? And why is the flipside equally true as there are no doubt Bad Bunny fans reading this piece wondering why I am inexplicably claiming that there are everyday people out there who somehow haven’t heard of the most famous man in music. His official standing as the most heard unknown artist in history has revealed that the divide between the internet and mainstream culture has never been clearer.
When he first claimed the top streamed spot in 2020, the Puerto Rican star had never had an album or single break the top 100 in the UK charts. Thus, he was, for most of the populous, a complete unknown—an unknown tallying more yearly listens than any artist in history, to boot. Cultural divides aside, a name with that clout should surely have occupied headlines and featured in mainstream reportage.
Ultimately, this muted exposure on TV and printed press in the west has been a moot point when it comes to his rising levels of listenership. In fact, despite the reality that most millennials and above may well never have heard of him, Bad Bunny is a name that registers with younger generations in every region of the world. Even if they don’t particularly like his music, the ‘need-to-know’ appeal of a fad for the online masses proves absorbing. If you had never heard of him when you happened upon this article, then the chances are you’ll be streaming him any minute now. This is how we operate online: we see a craze and we crave the context so that we’re not left out. This is even more apparent among younger generations. In some ways, that helps to explain Bad Bunny’s rise.
However, the notion of ‘virality’ is a sensation that, for the most part, conventional media has avoided. There are myriad reasons why this is the case, but for now, let’s explore two of the most prominent. Cultural divides between the old and young are eternal, it’s even written about in Homer. However, now that youth culture has moved online, a lot of the trends are confined to a screen. If Spotify Wrapped had been around in 1977 and suddenly the Sex Pistols topped the chart, it would’ve been no surprise to anyone; they had occupied headlines, made controversial primetime TV appearances and millions had started dressing like maniacs in imitation.
Now, such movements occur on a handheld device and are sheltered from the uninitiated masses by the brick wall of a download—it is a cultural revolution that is literally unfurling behind closed doors. Trends like reggaeton remain out of sight and out of mind amid wider society. Thus, when South Korean boybands like BTS crack the top five globally streamed artists, it leaves many scratching their heads and millions of others mimicking the dances that trended them to the top. Because these stars defy convention, the mainstream media doesn’t know where to shelve them. ‘It’s just an online thing’ they seem to say, as though the internet hasn’t completely permeated modern life.
The internet has changed culture in a profound way, but it’s been so obfuscated that often its impact is hard to fathom. In part, this is often because the usual cultural mainstays have identified it like a fart in an elevator, it’s unmistakably there, and it won’t shift, but it’s best off completely ignored except for the occasional wry glance in a culprit’s direction. They can’t figure out how to reference things like TikTok on a suit and tie news segment, so producers have said ‘this story is not for us’ even though it often has a far bigger audience and impact than conventional culture.
By this I mean to say that podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience average around 11 million listeners per episode and yet until racist remarks and a feud with the cultural mainstay Neil Young came to the fore – incidents which could be reported on conventionally – you wouldn’t have heard anything about it on outlets like the BBC or in broadsheet newspapers. They’re missing a trick, Joe Rogan and his brethren can literally swing elections, but it’s also a podcast and they only exist between headphones.
And that is another reason why Bad Bunny is oddly unknown to so many people—are online lives are often anonymous. Take, for instance, this personal story that many of you might be able to relate to: a while ago I chanced a message on a prompt on Twitter that a friend had liked a post by a streamer. I have known this friend for 30 years and not once had he mentioned that he watched streamers. When I clicked on the streamer’s profile, they had over 30 million followers. I, however, had never heard of them—and my friend had never thought that it was pertinent to mention them. Ultimately, this proves that social media is not a social space. It is a realm of rampant and escapist individualism. And the nooks and crannies for these individuals to hide in are mind-bendingly plentiful.
If you look at the enormous swathe of music on Spotify alone that helps to explain the ocean of culture that we are dealing with. Statistics show that North Americans listen to an average of 140 minutes of Spotify per day. With that average pop song running for 3.5 minutes, that is 40 songs per day. If you apply that to every one of the 460 million active users on Spotify, then you have 18.5 billion songs being streamed every day. Thus, Bad Bunny’s listenership might prove melon twisting, but ultimately it only accounts for 0.27% of annual listens.
Furthermore, when you consider that the majority of them come from Spotify’s 18-24 age range, it is actually quite easy to see why you might have missed him if you’re into alternative music and not being served the same algorithm that has presented the Latin megastar to the western masses while the mainstream media turns a blind eye. In short, if you aren’t in the know, then you simply didn’t stand a chance of finding out about Bad Bunny. His popularity purely exists in the binary workings of the internet, and your algorithms simply never informed you.
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