On a recent Tuesday afternoon, with the strains of his new single, "Gritar" (Shout), playing in the background, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
- 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.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] Now
that AT&T has brought him back for a Mother's Day campaign, can
Fonsi do an encore with his new set, "Tierra Firme," due out this
summer?
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 [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]' "Euphoria" (Universal/Republic), [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'s "Iconos" and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]'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."source:.billboard.com
