BILLIONS CLUB: Bad Bunny (6/376)

BILLIONS CLUB

Bad Bunny (6/376)

93/376= 24%*

* One of Bad Bunny's Billions Club tracks, MIA has already been counted under Drake.

     This is the first non-English speaking/bilingual artist in the Billions Club.  I suspect that Spanish and Korean are the only two non-English languages represented in the Billions Club- I can't think of any French, German, Italian or Japanese songs that are on the list off hand.  In addition to being the first non-English language artist in the Billions Club, Bad Bunny is also the first non-internet rap artist who launched his career inside the streaming era.  His first LP was released in 2018 and he's been the "most streamed" artist on Spotify in 2020, 2021 and 2022.  That seems a little incongruous because he currently sits at number 15 worldwide according to his current Spotify profile.  You'd think the biggest streaming artist in the world in the past three years would be at, or close, to number one, not fifteenth. 

    Consistent with this success, three songs from his May, 2022 LP,  Un Verano Sin Ti have already made it into the Billions Club.  A fourth, Ojitos Lindros is on the cusp with 950 million streams. A fifth, Efecto is at 887 million streams and a sixth is at 786 million streams and then there are three more songs that have each accrued a half billion.  There can be no question that Bad Bunny is still on the rise with a minimum of two more songs to cross the billion stream threshold within the next year or so.  It's entirely possible that Bad Bunny will be the next artist to reach double digits on the Billions Club.  He's competing with Post Malone and Ariana Grande,  who both only need one more track to make it to double digits, but Grande is basically at a stand still and it's hard to say what Malone will do next and whether that will generate another billion steamer.

  I don't have any personal experience listening to Bad Bunny but based on conversations with people who work in the music industry I know that his touring game is incredible, that he sells buckets of tickets to adoring fans.  I know that he is an iconic figure for many of the more non-traditional audiences for reggaetone.  Finally, I know that he runs a music making factory- I've heard conversations about Bad Bunny's "loops guys" i.e. guys who just work on the loops used in his music, and that he has more than one bunch of "loops guys" working for him full time.   This all suggests that future billion streamers from Bad Bunny- even beyond the songs that are already poised to cross over, are inevitable and that he is a force to be reckoned with.