On a recent Tuesday afternoon, with the strains of his new single, "Gritar" (Shout), playing in the background, Luis Fonsi - the Puerto Rican heartthrob with the plaintive voice and earnest, boy-next-door good looks - stood in front of a video camera in a park in downtown Miami and said in Spanish: "Congratulations to all moms. Let's all shout in happiness!"
"And shout, shout, shout!" played his song in the background, as Fonsi displayed his very white, open smile.
Fonsi's endearing. He's entreating. He sings and writes mainly in Spanish, but thinks in Spanish and English-a result of having been raised in Orlando, Fla., most of his life. And the duality spills into his music, which is Latin pop with hues of R&B in the vocals and rock in the arrangements. Fonsi has the sort of wide appeal that both labels and sponsors find increasingly valuable-a fact AT&T first seized upon in 2008, when the company used him and his single "No Me Doy Por Vencido" (I Won't Give Up) for a major campaign tied to the Summer Olympics. At the time, sales of Latin music in the United States were already on a downward spiral, but Fonsi bucked the trend. "Palabras del Silencio" (Universal Music Latino)-the album linked to the AT&T campaign single-sold close to 250,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, more than any of Fonsi's previous albums.
The U.S. Latin population continues to climb-50.5 million in 2010, up from 35.3 million in 2000, according to the latest Census numbers. But sales of Latin albums-defined as those whose content is at least 51% in Spanish-hit an all-time low in 2010. According to Nielsen SoundScan, year-end sales of Latin albums for 2010 tallied 12.4 million, a 28% drop from the 16.9 million sold in 2009 (those figures don't include single downloads) and just a third of the 37.8 million sold at the height of the market in 2006. By contrast, overall album sales in the United States last year dipped 12.8%-from 373.9 million units in 2009 to 326.2 million units in 2010.
In the first three months of 2011, the decline has slowed somewhat. Across the U.S. market as a whole, album sales were down 5.3% compared with first-quarter 2010. For Latin, the first-quarter drop was 7.9%, from 3.4 million to 3.1 million albums sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Of those, only 266,000 were digital albums-a significant 29.8% increase over the 205,000 sold in the same period last year, but a minuscule number nevertheless.
Thus, the predicament: As the Hispanic population has grown, the market for Latin music hasn't kept pace-it's shrunk. For years, loss of retail space, the tough economy, physical piracy, immigration crackdowns and a still-developing Latin digital marketplace have all been named as culprits. But many in the industry also suspect that a potential audience for Latin music simply isn't being reached-either through marketing and promotional efforts or at a more visceral, emotional level, with the music and artists themselves.
One big problem, says a label executive who asked to remain anonymous, is, "We segment too much. Latino this, Latino that, and we're not hitting this second-, third-generation consumer that is not going to go to iTunes Latino or AOL Latino. They're going to go to the regular iTunes store. And yet, we continue segregating Hispanic artists from the rest of the bunch."
Labels in search of a solution are increasingly focusing on artists who have bilingual, bicultural appeal, while relying on sponsors for added exposure and expanding online marketing and sales efforts. And the emphasis, meanwhile, has shifted beyond mere music sales.
"It's no longer about how many albums we sell but how much we make overall," says Walter Kolm, president of Universal Music Latino/Machete, Fonsi's label. "How much is an artist's revenue from all his businesses and endorsements? Today, the marketing we do is not only to sell albums but to increase an artist's success and generate income of all kinds."
As a result, artists like Fonsi, who can touch fans on both sides of the language divide, are increasingly more in demand.
"The [Spanish-only-speaking] niche has become smaller and smaller," says Guillermo Page, senior VP of commercial and sales for Sony Music Latin.
Growing Bilingual Population
According to U.S. Census data published in 2010, the number of Spanish speakers in the United States stood at 34.5 million in 2007, having grown by 23.4 million between 1980 and 2007, more than any other language. But among Spanish speakers, nearly as many were U.S.-born as foreign-born-17 million vs. 17.5 million, respectively. And 53% of all Spanish speakers reported speaking English "very well."
"Nowadays you have to really work on the general market," Page says. "The increase you see of Hispanics in the U.S. Census, those guys are fully acculturated and bilingual."
Such sentiment is borne out by 2010 Latin album sales, with Enrique Iglesias' "Euphoria" (Universal/Republic), Marc Anthony's "Iconos" and Shakira's "Sale el Sol" (both on Sony) finishing as the three top-selling Latin albums of the year, respectively, according to Nielsen SoundScan. No big surprise there: All three are major artists with broad crossover appeal. But similarly, the top-selling album by a new act was the self-titled debut by Prince Royce-a New York-born bachata singer bolstered by the radio success of his cover of "Stand by Me."
Despite being sung mostly in English, the track found airplay on top 40 Spanish-language stations that, especially in the past year, have become more willing to play English repertoire. Today, there are not only more English-language songs than ever on Billboard's Hot Latin Songs chart, but they're also staying on the chart longer.
In 2010, for example, 25 English-language tracks appeared on the Hot Latin Songs chart and 15 spent more than 10 weeks each on the tally, both unprecedented occurrences. By contrast, in 2009, 16 English-language tracks charted on Hot Latin Songs, but only four stayed for more than 10 weeks; in 2008, 14 English tracks charted and only one exceeded the 10-week mark.
"It was a question of timing," says Sergio George, president of Royce's indie label, Top Stop Music. "In the past, [Spanish-language] radio didn't want to play anything that was over 50% in English. But they totally embraced it. They're incorporating American music because they knew American kids weren't listening to them before. Maybe 'Stand by Me' wouldn't have played on Latin radio five years ago."
http://www.billboard.com/#/features/luis-fonsi-the-billboard-cover-story-1005149192.story
0 comments:
Post a Comment