Reggae Global Market Share Dips By 14% In Q1 2022

- Staff Reporter

Reggae's performance for the first quarter of 2022 in the global music space generated just over 1 Billion Spotify Streams. Radio spins worldwide for the period between Jan-April 2022 hit 1.6 million spins, while on Youtube the genre clocked in 358 million views.

According to Spotify's latest Loud & Clear report, 7,600 Reggae artists globally are recognised as "professional or professionally aspiring". However, it must be noted that 33% of the streams accounted for were harvested by 1% of the artists, or just 76 of the globally recognised artists under the Reggae genre.

The Reggae genre umbrella includes five commercially recognised subgenres, namely Dancehall, Roots Reggae, Dub, Ska and Reggae Fusion, as reported by music metrics provider viberate.com.

Of the 20 commercially recognised super genres Reggae ranked at #20, a high cry from its peak at #12 just two years ago.

USA, Great Britain, Germany, France and Brazil remain the top 5 consumers of Reggae, yet the genre's Global Market Share dipped to 0.57% during Q1 2022 compared to 0.65% for the same period in 2021, which represents a 14% loss in its global market share.

This news does not reflect well for the homegrown industry(Jamaica) which represents 11% or 853 of the 7,600 globally recognized artists.

The assumption by some critics is that Reggae is losing its market share to #19 ranked African music, more specifically its sub-genre Afrobeat which has since the start of the year consistently delivered radio ready singles with big mainstream potential.

Others blame the loss on what some critics fingered as the "low quality" output of the new wave sound aptly called "Traphall", which many remarked has taken a tangent from the traditional expectations of Reggae and Dancehall consumers at home and aboard with its dark, Grime tinged, HipHop infused soundscape.