English language repertoire losing ground globally – Luminate report

Luminate’s 2023 mid-year music report covering both the US and global trends released this week indicates that the share of English language content in the Top 10 000 US total on-demand streaming – audio and video – tracks is down 4.2 percentage points since 2021 to 88.3% at the halfway point of 2023.

Meanwhile, the share of Spanish language content in the US has grown 3.6 percentage points over the same period to 7.9%.

According to Luminate’s Music 360 research data from Q2 2023, 40% of people in US listen to music in a non-English language.

While English language repertoire is still dominant, it is not matching the overall US market growth rate in streaming. Furthermore, strong streaming growth in regions such as Asia (107%) and LATAM (70%) for the six-month period means that English language global market share is being eroded.

Globally, the top five languages in the Top 10 000 on-demand streaming (audio & video) tracks at the 2023 mid-year point are English (56.4% share), Spanish (10.6%), Hindi (8.7%), Korean (3.1%) and Portuguese (1.6%). English had a 67.2% share in 2022. Apart from Hindi, the other top languages also lost share globally.

In March, Luminate data revealed the global music industry surpassed one trillion streams. This milestone was reached in only three months – a month earlier than in 2022 – and reflects the continuing strong growth of digital music consumption.

The report also shows:

• Global on-demand streams (audio and video combined) are up 30.8% from mid-year 2022 to 3.3 trillion.
• Global on-demand audio streams (audio only, no video) are up 22.9% from mid-year 2022 to 2.0 trillion.
• US on-demand streams (audio and video combined) are up 15.0% from mid-year 2022 to 713.5 billion.
• US on-demand audio streams (audio only, no video) are up 13.5% from mid-year 2022 to 616.5 billion.
• US album sales (physical and digital combined) are up 7.9% from mid-year 2022 with growth across all physical formats (CD, vinyl and cassette).

The total share of album consumption accounted for by catalogue (music older than 18 months) in the US is up 0.4 percentage points to 72.8% compared to the same period in 2022. Similarly, US physical album sales are up 13.3%, powered by the year-on-year growth in US vinyl sales of 21.7%.