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Precisely three months in the past, on Sept. 22, we formally launched Billboard Español with Colombian star Camilo on our first digital cowl. We began actually from zero.
In the present day, after solely 90 days, we publish over 40 unique tales per week to the positioning, boast over 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 month-to-month visits to billboardespanol.com and are rising our variety of visits and customers by 20% month to month.
Because of music followers who converse Spanish in each nook of the world, Billboard Español is a success.
Given what we’ve attained when it comes to numbers, it’d be logical to say that launching Billboard Español was a enterprise determination. However that is, at the beginning, an initiative that comes from the guts.
After I got here to work at Billboard, 20 years in the past (sure, unreal), I felt my mission was to “translate” our music, our tradition and our artists to the mainstream, English-speaking world. I seemed round me and I couldn’t perceive why main media firms ignored what occurred musically in Spanish. The shortage of curiosity prolonged to different areas, like movie and tv. We have been just about invisible. It felt like language was an unbreachable barrier.
However in Billboard I discovered a strong device: a media model that was acknowledged because the “Bible” of the music business. And inside it, a platform the place I may consistently generate content material about Latin music and its artists. We devoted the final 20 years to rising this platform and opening the eyes and ears of our readers to the sounds of our artists.
From one a column every week, we went to a web page, a number of pages, a Latin division and a wide selection of protection that features a huge menu of movies, social media and reporters within the Latin world, along with the Billboard Latin Music Awards and, after all, our unparalleled Billboard Latin Music Week.
We’ve had greater than 40 Latin artists on the duvet of Billboard and we’ve made historical past. We have been the primary English-language media model to have a reggaeton star on its cowl (Daddy Yankee in 2005), the primary and solely to have J Balvin and Nicky Jam collectively on a canopy, and the primary to affix Jennifer Lopez with Maluma. The checklist goes on and on. This 12 months alone, Romeo Santos, Maluma, Grupo Firme and Sebastian Yatra — 4 artists representing 4 completely different Latin music genres — have been on our cowl, along with Camilo.
The ultimate flourish, after all, was Unhealthy Bunny on the duvet of our No. 1s problem. Not solely was he the primary Latin artist to ever grace our No. 1 cowl problem, however he was additionally the primary artist to be featured on simultaneous Billboard covers in English and Spanish.
Billboard Español is the newest hyperlink on this lengthy chain of achievements, and it’s maybe probably the most important, for we’re protecting Latin music in two languages. Along with our extraordinary Latin music staff, we’ve constructed a superb editorial staff for Billboard Español, with Sigal Ratner-Arias, a revered veteran of leisure and music reporting, as deputy editor.
We are actually creating a brand new means of protecting music, in our language.
In the present day, Spanish is the second most-spoken language in america; in line with the U.S. Census, greater than 41 million individuals converse it at house. And music in Spanish is the second most listened to music on this planet, solely after music in English.
That signifies that for 2023, there’s solely room for us to develop, increasing our protection of Latin music on all our Billboard platforms, together with Billboard Español.
One of the best is but to come back!
Leila Cobo
Chief Content material Officer, Billboard Latin/Español
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