Thanks in large part to top seller Bad Bunny, Latin music saw
explosive growth in 2022, exceeding $1 billion in U.S. revenues for
the first time, and up nearly 25% from 2021. Amazon Music is on a
similar path as it relates to Latin music and its many subgenres.
Leading the charge: Rocío Guerrero, a veteran of Spotify and Warner
Music Group whose role as Amazon’s Global Head of Latin Music runs
across multiple digital and physical offerings at the retail giant.
Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Shirley Halpern, Executive editor of Music. Rossio Guerrero, Global head of Latin Music at Amazon Music has collected many professional accolades over her career. If there's a power list of women in music, she's on it. Latin leaders, she's there too, and among international executives, the well traveled native of Spain ranks high as well. But to hear Rossio's stories to connect with a personal journey, one which took her from a musical family in a small Spanish town to Brazil, London, Stockholm, and now New York, which she's called home for ten years. Talk about being early on music streaming, Rossio joined Spotify in two thousand eleven, before the service had even launched in the US. She started there as a sales planner and rose up the ranks to the position of head of Global Music, Cultures, Shows and Editorial. That's when Rosso truly went global. Her purview at Spotify included Latin music, of course, but also Indian, Arabic and African songs as well. Dialed in on the music consumption habits of the diaspora. Rosso then took her institutional knowledge of the tech platform and learned the music business from the other side, joining Warner Music Group in twenty eighteen as vice president of A and R and cross cultural Strategy. Just before the pandemic, Amazon came calling and Rosso signed on to lead the Latin music team. For the last three years, she's been busy building exclusive original content opportunities via video, podcasts, live streaming, or playlisting, and has taken on such ambitious projects as the mini document ENTERI La Cuna del Dembo, tracing the evolution of the dembo subgenre and featuring Latin music's biggest current crossover star, Bad Bunny. Thanks in large part to top album and ticket seller Bad Bunny, Latin music has seen explosive growth in recent years, and in twenty twenty two exceeded one billion dollars in US Latin music revenues for the first time, up nearly twenty five percent from twenty twenty one. Amazon Music has also seen continued growth as it relates to Latin music, which is not in itself a genre, but rather a diverse musical through line for Spanish speaking artists worldwide. On this episode, which follows Varieties April thirteenth, Miami Entertainment Town event recognizing Latin executive talent, I talked to Rossio about hermo to super serve music's underserved globally, as well as her accomplishments, which include a Maluma answered live stream from magazine, and what she learned during Spotify startup years, namely Swedish, a suggestion of the platform's co founder Daniel Eck join us after the break, Welcome back to strictly business. Here's my conversation with Amazon Music's Rossio Guerrero. So you grew up in Spain.
Yeah.
Yeah, I grew up in Spain, in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Really it's like between Sevilia and Madrid, and my family is still there. I have some relatives in Madrid, but most of them my dad, my mom, my brother, they're still in Don Benito.
How did you get into music growing up in Spain?
So my family it's a family of musicians. So I was really it's in my dna. I was born to music. My mom is a pianist. Both my mom and my dad worked at the Conservatory of Music in Dominito. My mom was the director, my dad was the vice director. She's an interesting dynamic. That's all we talked about at home. It was my second home. I studied my musical studies at three. My mom was my teacher at the beginning, and then yeah, and then I studied piano, then moved to violin. So you know, I did at least seventeen years of music classical. My sister is also a music teacher. She's a pianist as well, so we all play instruments. None of them work on the music industry per se, but both my mom and my sister do teach music in college and in school as well.
Wow, so were you supposed to be a professional musician?
To be honest, growing up, I was like rebelling against I was mad that my mom was pushing me and you know, telling me you have to do music. I just didn't understand. Why did I have to do that?
Now? I do? Right?
So when I moved out of my home to study and I went to college, I did journalism.
I quit, so to speak.
I was like, oh, I'm free now I don't have to do classical music anymore.
Then I took it back after the years.
By the way, I actually ten years ago I studied in New York again, So you know, I think the teenagers period kind of took me to another side.
So I never thought of being a professional musician.
Now, okay, how did you end up in the States.
Well, that's that's a story, you know.
After I went to study to Madrid journalism, I got a scholarship to study in London, and that was an inflection point for me. I get those pumps, even though, like you know, it's my life. But I remember very clearly the first time I leave my country is when I realized how little did I know about the world and how much was out there to explore. So I really never came back after that. I went to Brazil. I spent a few months in Brazil just because learned the language, learned the culture, which was fascinating. By the way, Brazil is another universe. After Brazil, went back to London stay a few months. I shoot about what to do really next, so my mom convinced me come back to Spain. Figured it out what you're gonna do with your life. So went back to Madrid for a short period of time and that's where I found my first job in the industry, per se, and then from their move to Stockholm. With that job, I stayed there for three years, Stockholm, New York, and I been in New York every since. Sportify. I was very small at the time. We were only one hundred people I think. And what's fun is that Spain happened to be one of the first three countries that it was available at, so that's why you know, I got the job.
It was in sales, so.
It was really not like still like musically focused, but yeah, I mean it was just the beginning.
That's amazing. So you were in Stockholm twenty twelve and twenty thirteen, that was like before it even launched in the US.
Mm hm, that's correct.
So when I moved to Stockholm, Spotify still wasn't available in the US or Latin America. It was a very interesting time because it was a very small company and it just took off, you know. And when Spotify launched in Latin America and the US is when I moved to New York.
I liked the stokom. It's just like a differentent world.
In summer is day all day, and then in winter is dark most of the time, which I had a very hard time dealing with as a Southern Spanish person.
It was beautiful.
Talking about Latin music today. So the big headline when it comes to the Latin music business is that US Latin music revenues in twenty twenty two exceeded a billion dollars for the first time. And it also the genre grew significantly faster than the broader industry. It's up nearly twenty five percent from the year before. Also in Amazon Music, there's been continued growth in Latin America. Your monthly streams of Latin music is doubled year over year worldwide. Why the boom? What's driving it?
What's happening right?
The boom really started a few years ago, and even before the first boom, I mean the first most recent boom with the Spasito. As you might remember, Latin music was always there. So just to give context, Latin music was always big because there is a lot of people that live in Latin America and Spain and in the diaspora.
It's huge as you.
Know in the US, the settlement speaking Europe as well, So it was always big. What happened was that were streaming, we started counting that consumption and those streams, so you could see being in the inside, how the more people were listening to Latin music coming from Latin America, the more penetration of streaming in those territories, the more Latin songs were popping up in the global chart.
So it was just math. It was just math.
And the more Latin music songs were popping up in the global charts, the more visibility of Latin music to known Latin audiences. So it was like a visious circle that started with streaming. But it also in parallel, the population of the United States continue to grow with Hispanics right like today young adults twenty five percent of young adults are Hispanics and they're growing six times faster than no Hispanics. So obviously, when you think about the combination of the streaming penetration in Latin countries, the growing Latin population in the US, these are people that are very digital oriented. They over indexing consumption, music consumption, digital consumption.
So when you put all.
Of that together, this happens, and it's going to continue to happen. It's it's no way to go back because the population continues to grow, the music continues to grow, the exposure to other cultures continue to happen.
So this is honestly just not the beginning.
But we are still at the beginning of a very long journey, if that makes sense.
Yeah, totally well, and especially like looking at your journey. When Bad Bunnies Unveranos in Ti became the first non English language to top the Billboard two hundred, it feels like, in a way it was like the culmination of the many years that you spent building this Latin music global expansion strategy, which was kind of instrumental in globalizing the genre. That was your job at Spotify is working with these musical cultures and diasporas. I mean, did it feel personal to you?
You're talking and look I'm getting like goosetamps. I get a little emotional because it was and it still is something so incredible to.
Be part of and have contributed, even if just a tiny bit.
I always I remember a few years ago, I would always say to my team, you know what happened with food? International food, Like food has being embeedved into other cultures, Like we all eat Indian food, we eat Latin food, we eat you know, a lot of Japanese food. I always told them, we can make this happen with music, Like imagine a world in which music no matter the language, the genre, it's just it. It's just part of mainstream's, part of pop culture. It represents the world as it is, right, So being part of that was always very personal to me.
That was my mission.
It still is my mission today, is give Latin culture the space that it deserves. It's just pushing a little bit something that was going to happen, you know, And back then you'd be surprised, like we wouldn't have a lot of like Latin music songs in non Latin playlists or stations, and it was like challenging sometimes to make that happen. But now you look back at this, and you look at these playlists or stations or any radio station, and it just happens.
And every time I'm.
On a taxi, for instance, and I hear this pop radio sound like oh, and I suddenly hear a lot in so I'm like, wow, like this and it's just normal, you know, And I'm like, this just was not normal ten years ago. It just wasn't and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to.
Be part of this penetration of this English speaking market. You mentioned before that you know, the numbers of Hispanics are just larger. So is this kind of a bell whether to pay attention to because of its cultural impact or is it really just a question of demographics and you know, like what is opening the door here? Is it just the number of people or are people actually open to other cultures and other languages.
It's an excellent question, and it's both.
I think because of the demographic because of a streaming penetration, we were given the opportunity to be heard, and the more songs that were popping up, the more open people were to listening to other stuff that were in different languages. And that's just like any other transition, it just happens, and when you get to the other side, it's just part of the norm. It's part of mainstream, is part of pop culture. And I think it's both. I absolutely think streaming has also helped people be more open about music because you also listen to more music in general thanks for streaming.
You listen to music when.
You're working out, where you are trying to focus, when you're trying to party, So that in itself is giving you more chances to hear two more artists. And when you're getting all these like other songs popping up, you're giving it the chance.
So it's a combination of both.
Is there a particular subgenre of Latin music that is reacting more than others? Like I definitely want to talk about regional Mexican, but it seems like reggaeton was kind of the first one that was really embraced by US audiences. Is that right?
Yeah, that is right, And I'm glad you bring this up, because Latin is not a genre, right. You know, sometimes Latin gets compared to other Anglo genres and I always say, wait, no, you need to talk about Anglo music and Latin music. And then you have hip hop and we have hip hop, and you have rock and we have rock. It seems obvious, right, But you'd be surprised that a lot of people don't understand that nuance which is massive right within all of the genres of Latin music, which again you have all the same ones that you're familiar with in the Anglo world. You then also have Latin exclusive genres like sasa, chata, menge. Those are very just like Latin music and then you have the typical genres reggaeton and upbat. Latin music was the one that really studied the globalization because it's something you dance to, it's something you party.
It's not like the lyric the most important part of the song.
It's important too, and in many cases they have strong, powerful messages, but it's the feeling. So that, combined with the fact that in the Latin markets for US, celebration and party is part of our culture, is one of the reasons why it did resonate with all of the Latin countries. By default, then those were the songs that were popping up the most in non Latin countries. And again you get a feeling. It doesn't matter the language you're listening to. It's a big feeling, a danceabold track. So it makes sense that that was the genre that started, like the movement, but I'm hoping that reg don't opened the doors so people would be open to hear other songs and other languages. And now it's our job to prove that there are many other genres of Latin music.
We need to take a quick break, but we'll be back with more from Rossio Guerrero and we're back with Amazon's global head of Latin Music, Rosso Guerrero. What is sort of the essence of your job as a curator at Amazon?
So right now, our Latin team just takes care of many different aspects of the Latin business.
One of them is the curation and the programming.
We have an excellent programming team that takes care of literally a soundtrack your life, and they're literally investigating all the trends that are happening.
What should we curate for what moments.
That's the work I started at at Spotify, by the way, so I know it's a beautiful work. It's very reworthing. You're listening to users' feedback and then you're also trying new stuff, presenting to customers and fans things they didn't even know they liked yet. That is such an exciting part of our programming job. There is something very exciting that we do, particularly at Amazon, which is a global Latin syndicate. Syndicate basically means that we are curating for local audiences in the different local markets, but we also have regional and Latin global playlists. So what we do is that we help music travel across countries, so when we see something starting to work in one country, we transfer that to the regional playlist so we can show is that music to other countries and then from there, if it works, we move it into global playlists, so maybe non Latin fans can also enjoy. So it's a very exciting part of the business for sure.
Talking about a subgenre that has really seen significant growth, Regional Mexican. Explain what it is and why we're seeing And I love the name of your initiative, gen Max, so great. Why we're seeing this, Like I feel like it was always there, but just more attention on it, more I guess, more consumption of it.
Yeah, So regional Mexican is a local genre that it's massive in Mexico, but it's also huge in the US because of how big the Mexican population is, so the genre has historically been really isolated in a way to those territories US, Mexico, a little bit of Colombia. Now streaming in those markets is also growing really fast, and you probably aware that Mexico is one of the biggest streaming capitals of the world, so of course what's happening is a lot of regional Mexican consumption is coming from those countries and it's kind of happening what happened with Latin music, but within our world. So the more people are consuming regional Mexican from those territories, the more it's popping up into all the Latin countries, the more other Latin arries when I jump on that wagon. The more Latin songs that are regional Mexican are coming out there that are being globalized, and that's what's happening currently with artist like Pest and Pluma, they are so big right now. Christian Nodal bad Banni just released regional Mexican song with group of from Tera, literally like out of the blue. It's such an exciting movement within the Latin music space to see how artists don't care about genres anymore.
They are all collaborating with it other.
A lot of the young Latin artists don't want to put themselves in a genre box. They're just doing different like fusion like stuff. It's the nature of our market too, it's so big. It's Latin country is a little different to each other. We are connected culturally by many trades, but we're.
Also very different.
But the nature of this market is so powerful because it allows artists to just collaborate with each other all the time. If one Mexican artist wants to increase their career in Spain, they're gonna collaborate with the Spanish artists and vice versa, and then a Brazilian one with a US Latin artist. Like it's just kind of impressive and you don't see that in other markets, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think it's really interesting that the Latin Grammys are going to be in Spain next year.
Very interesting and also south of Spain, like that's where I'm from.
Let's see how that goes.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think changes are always good and it's going to be exciting to see what happens when you take it out of the US. But it speaks a lot about the global nature of this music category.
Tell me about content that you guys are creating Amazon Music. Beyond actual music, there's there's podcasts, as documentaries. You mentioned the live stream. Are these your initiatives and your ideas?
Yes, So we have a team for Latin music.
We have a team in the US, but also countries in Latin America, in Spain, we collaborate and work together to deliver the best content and initiatives that we came for Latin music fans. One of the things that I was most excited about when I moved to Amazon Music was precisely that the breadth of possibilities that a place like Amazon could offer two artists and fans. I was very drawn to that. You know, I'm like, Wow, this is going to be exciting, and it is very exciting. I've been here three years and I can say I was right in my assumption.
And you know, one of the things that.
We're very proud of is the entertainment offering that we can provide to artists. And you know, it goes from we talked about playlists, all of the stuff that you can do in the Amazon Music app, but then you have live stream, we have Twitch, we have Alexa with the voice projects. We have video, and we spoke about video before Latin audience is over Index, so something that we really focus a lot.
We have podcasts, we have merged.
So there is so many different things that we're doing for the Latin business, and there are things that have never been done, there are things that are new, Like it's just very exciting. Not too long ago, we released Mini Dog. Speaking about sub genres, by the way, Laguna del Denbo is one of those initiatives that we do to focus on the subgenres that maybe don't get as much as pecipity, or they're about to or they are happening right now. Then boy is one of those subgenres that it's really like happening coming from the Dominican Republic. This documentary we have Bad Bunny. We had a lot of different artists that were part of it. Was a great, great initiative with live streams with Don Maluma. Maluma live stream last year was very special because it was the most important moment of his career, and that's what I was so excited about. It's like, how are we together with artists in those moments and bring that to the rest of the world. So we did the global license from Medejing, his hometown to the world. It was called put Medajong l Mappa, so it's like put it on the map, and it was so beautiful. It was so exciting, and this is the type of things that we really are looking forward to do with merch.
I mean, you're familiar with the merch business.
We've done several stuff with jabalbing with it a monopoly last year with Murakami Exclusive line. So March business obviously a very exciting one that it's very natural to Amazon. Obviously, we've also done exclusive podcast We had one with Beggy Gee a couple of years ago. We right now did La Semnal, which is actually becoming a Twitch show. So you see, there is all these different channels that we can play with and excite both fans and artists, and that's honestly something we we really are focusing on right now.
So great.
I haven't had a chance to, but I'm going to watch the documentary because I love those stories about how a type of music was born, like Reggaeton is a fascinating stories like people who came to the Panama Canal, and you know, I just I love that stuff. I love being able to contextualize it, and it's it's really great that you guys do that. Okay, So I want to talk to you about your time at Warner because you were Warner Music Latin at VP of A and R and cross cultural strategy, which included artist development, identifying emerging talent. Is there any artists that you worked with or examples of key campaigns that you were very proud of.
Yeah, So my timent Warner was very exciting because I wanted to get closer to the beginning of the music journey, that makes sense, Like I wanted to get closer to the artists, look at everything from the inside, gain even more respect for music.
So I was super lucky.
I was based in New York out of the Atlantic offices, but reported to the Warner Latin branch in Miami, and the best part of my job it was that cross cultural interactions. So I would bring some Latin artists to some of them maybe Atlantic artists, and we would do some crossover. We did one with Paolo Londra. I mean we did many Anita. I remember this duo called Las Vidia that we sign while my time there, and they're like amazing, their twins beautiful, so talented. I'm still looking at them very closely all the time. But yeah, in general, getting closer to Aris, getting closer to the managers and this studio part of it, and then how do you globalize this from the label side, That was definitely very exciting.
Okay, so being the global head of Latin music, I assume that involves traveling a lot.
Well, I mean, I have to admit during the pandemic, things slow down a lot. Prior to the pandemic, Yeah, I definitely had to travel Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Miami. I go to Miami a lot from New York. I go to LA sometimes, but Miami it's definitely.
Where I got the most.
Miami's were a lot of the artists community and the industries they are based there.
There's a huge, huge industry.
We have some of the industry in LA, but Miami is definitely the number one CD for the industry and the artists. So that's where all of the companies that we work with. The music labels are managers. Puerto Rico as well, but Miami is the hub without a doubt.
You speak several languages, right, yes, so you speak you speak English, Spanish, Portuguese.
French, and I knew a little bit of Swedish, but that's gone. It was one of the requirements we had to actually learn Swedish.
Are you serious, Daniel Kbete. Everyone learned Swedish. Yeah, it was optional, but it was encouraged.
But also you know, my partner was Swedish at the time, so you know, I did immerse myself into the culture, and I do like doing that though. Every time I have lived somewhere, I like to really immerse myself.
Do you feel that's been an advantage for you being multi lingual.
I think both music studies and languages definitely allow my brain to be on the move all the time.
I don't know if that makes sense.
I feel like my brain is always constantly like moving, so it's like agile, and that allow me to kind of like absorb things maybe quicker.
I don't know.
It's hard to know because I don't know anything different, but I think definitely studying music and languages has helped me.
Last thing, I'm a big fan of LinkedIn, and there was one thing that you wrote in there that I really love. You wrote it's always day one. I love that.
That is actually I can claim that that's Amazon's, that's Jeff Bezos. Always day one means every day is a day and an opportunity to innovate. It's a day to start from scratch. You don't slow down, you always think forward, You're always try new things. You never you're not scared of failing, you know, And that resonated so much with me. I literally believe so so much in that statement that I take it to her every day and I use it with my family.
I use it all the time.
It's just something that with two three words, you're saying so much and you're packing so much, and it really kind of like embraces what I am in a way. So yeah, it's always day one.
I love that. Rossillo, thank you so much for speaking with us, and we're just so impressed with everything that you're doing. Congratulations and thanks for being on Strictly Business.
Thank you so much, Sheirley. Honestly, it was such a pleasure. I mean this, I'm super honor and I hope that was useful to you and to everybody.
Thanks for tuning in to Variety's Strictly Business. This episode was edited by Laurence Schroeder. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear future episodes featuring conversations with media movers and shakers. Also leave a review on Apple Podcasts and let us know how we're doing.