These Are the Rising Latine Subgenres to Keep an Eye On for 2025
Art by Stephany Torres for Remezcla.
After the global música mexicana and, more specifically, corrido tumbados explosion these last years, Spotify is already eyeing the next Latine subgenre boom. To get an insight on what could be next, Remezcla talked to Spotify’s head of U.S. Latin Editorial Antonio Vazquez, who told us what emerging Latine subgenres are rising based on their user data trends.
According to Spotify, the platform’s top five emerging Latine subgenres in the U.S. include reggaeton chileno, Latin Afrobeats, reggaeton mexa, Latin electronic, and jazz colombiano. Remezcla has kept a close eye on some of these rising subgenres already – specifically reggaeton mexicano, thanks to skyrocketing artists like El Malilla and his colleagues, who are leading the new wave. We also know how reggeaton chileno is making strides partly due to FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s viral “Gata Only” and Julianno Sosa.
But what’s next? One of the hot subgenres Vazquez thinks is about to explode is within the Latin electronic spectrum, which Remezcla is also keeping tabs on. “We’ve seen a lot of rise in Latin electronic recently, and I think it’s very hard to actually pinpoint a Latin [artist] or just to talk about Latin electronic as an umbrella because electronic music is so multifaceted,” Vazquez tells Remezcla. He notes that the rise is happening due to users’ spiked interest in electro-corridos, mentioning artists like Los Esquivel and Fuerza Regida, as well as other dance and house beats like music from artists like DannyLux and Deorro.
“Then you have a very different part of Latin electronic, which is [subgenres like] hard techno, the uwuaracha, bolero house… It’s just like many different verticals of Latin electronic music from many different communities and niches,” he explains. “That’s also one of the trends that we’ve been seeing in Latin music overall this year, that it’s diversifying very rapidly into many different niches and audiences.”
He points out that this niche diversity is different compared to past years when artists would gravitate to a single genre such as reggaeton or, most recently, música mexicana. “I’ve really seen that transformation in the way Latin music has diversified. And it’s almost like a cultural renaissance, so to speak, where artists aren’t feeling that pressure to do just one genre or people are not just following one single wave, and rather they’re being able to just be way more creative,” he adds.
Jazz colombiano is also part of the top emerging Latine subgenres. Though Vazquez doesn’t know how to exactly pinpoint how this interest originated, he says that the data trends come from “grabbing information from how people create their playlists.” “There’s a lot of users that have jazz colombiano [as the name of their playlist] and then add some of these tracks into this playlist. Our algorithm will catch it as one of the descriptors from this genre. But again, these are just niches that are taking shape this year, and I think it’s part of this trend of diversification.”
Despite all these new subgenres on the rise, he says música mexicana’s boom isn’t over yet. One last point Vazquez makes is that Regional Mexican is still popular with subgenres like electro-corridos and norteño sax. At the same time, he mentions he’s also anticipating a resurgence in Latin Afrobeats. “I don’t know if anything will be as big as música mexicana, but we’re definitely putting more emphasis on supporting Latin afrobeats,” he says.
He mentions artists like Colombian artist Kapo, Honduran artist Key-Key, and Colombian artist Hamilton are all on the brink of putting the Latin afrobeats subgenre back into the mainstream’s eye. This checks out, seeing how Shakira’s newest single, “Soltera,” also embraces the subgenre and Kapo had a viral moment this summer with “OHNANA.”
While it’s too early to tell what will be hot in 2025, it will be interesting to see how these emerging subgenres unfold.