Yes, Music Streaming for Hispanics
By Lewis Camp
Services focus on the mobile-heavy demographic, with curated playlists
It’s no surprise that a music streaming service targeting Hispanics has finally launched.
What’s surprising is that no one had done it before La Musica, which bowed on Wednesday with a library of 23 million songs and an app available in Spanish or English.
A Hispanic music streaming service makes a lot of sense.
Hispanics make up a quarter of Pandora’s streaming audience, according to the service, and 39 percent of all Hispanics report listening to the online radio service in a typical week.
This demo spends more money on music annually than the average person, $135 versus $105, Nielsen says, and they are more engaged with artists on social media.
Add to that Hispanics’ heavy reliance on mobile to stay connected—84 percent of adults have smartphones—and this seems the ideal audience to target via streaming music.
Pandora has been around for 10 years, Spotify for seven. So why did La Musica take so long?
There’s no good answer.
“I think a lot of the services out there look at the market through a single lens,” says Jesus Lara, executive vice president of digital media strategy at Spanish Broadcasting System, which is behind the new service.
“It’s a big market, there are a lot of players. I wouldn’t want to compare ourselves to anyone at the moment. But where we can have a competitive advantage is our knowledge of the Hispanic market.”
The app is free and will eventually be ad-supported, though Lara notes there is no advertising yet. He says La Musica will target many of the advertisers already on traditional radio, including SBS stations.
Listeners can curate their own playlists or stream live feeds of SBS’s 20 stations across the country.
Lara says the app will default to Spanish or English depending on which language a user’s phone is set to.
The songs are bilingual, too. Lara emphasizes it’s not all Hispanic music. It’s music for Hispanics, which means lots of Latin artists such as Shakira and Marc Anthony and Juanes, but American singers, too, who are popular with young Hispanics.
The app is targeted at Millennials, and it allows them to add La Musica to their social media feeds, so that others can see what songs they’re listening to.
Playlists include everything from songs for a Sunday afternoon to kids’ music to the perfect tunes to crank when you’re heartbroken.
“We thought a lot about the differences between the ways Latinos consume music and how the general market consumes music,” Lara says.
“One difference we identified is that in general Hispanics have a broader portfolio of music preferences. For example, the American country consumer might dwell in pop, but they mostly listen country. It’s similar with hip-hop. Hispanics, on the other hand, have much broader preferences.”
