Reggae Outpaced By Afrobeat in 2022

- Staff Reporter

The Post-Covid music business has turned out to be a very challenging one for Reggae worldwide.

Certifiedstreams.com, the Caribbean-based music metrics service that tracks Reggae-related music data, has shared some very interesting insights to be included in its upcoming year-in-review report released each December.

Afrobeat continues to gormandise the Reggae market.

According to the data drop provided, Reggae music's global 2018 market share of 1.7%, has slimmed to 0.85% in 2022.

Afrobeat reported a 0.75% market share in 2018 which over the last four years has grown by almost 50% and is due to close 2022 at 1.2%.

As of Nov 2022, 8,300+ Reggae artists generated 1.1 Billion Spotify streams, 3.1 Billion Youtube views and 1.2 Million Radio Spins worldwide.

This is in comparison to the 4,300+ Afrobeat artists who generated 832 Million Spotify Streams, 2 Billion Youtube Views and 180,000 radio spins during the same period.

According to MIDia research group, Spotify reflected a 31% market share in 2021, with Youtube holding 8%.

Collectively they control 39% of the music streaming market.

Based on estimations by Certfiedstreams, the expected global streaming revenue for Reggae worldwide in 2022 is around USD24.59 Million.

Annual data has shown that the 90% lion's share of Spotify's streaming revenue is distributed to the genre's top 1%.

This leaves an estimated USD2.459 Million for the remaining 8,217 "professionally recognized artists" to split, but that also comes with its own set of variables to calculate.

341 festivals and concerts were slated in 2022. 

A 9.5% decrease compared to pre-covid numbers of 377 in 2018.

Europe accounted for 245 events or 39% of all Reggae live festivals, with North America accounting for just 70, followed by South America with a distant 8. 

Events in Oceania and Australia increased in 2022 to 9, up from 7 in 2018.

However, of the 341 slated in 2022, 187 reported an audience of less than 5,000 patrons.

Reggae has 5 commercially recognized sub-genres. Roots Reggae, Dancehall, Ska, Dub, and Reggae Fusion.

Roots Reggae reported the largest number of recognized music professionals with 3,700 artists, followed by Dancehall's 2,200 and Reggae Fusions' 1,000+.

Dancehall outpaced its counterparts this year on Youtube.

The sub-genre generated 323.6 Million Spotify Streams, 292,000 Radio Spins and 1.9 Billion or 61% of Reggae's 3.1 Billion views in 2022.

Roots Reggae continues to dominate Spotify and radio, generating 543.1 Million Spotify Streams, 580 Million Youtube Views,  and 720,000 of the reported 1.2 Million radio spins in 2022.

Reggae Fusion gained traction on terrestrial radio this year globally and reflected impressive growth on youtube. However, it continues to be outpaced by Dancehall on Spotify.

The sub-genre contributed a decent haul of 178 Million Spotify streams, 576 Million Youtube Views, and 274,000 radio spins to Global Reggae's 2022 Digital Streaming haul.