Billboard Español: Three Months Old and Growing Fast

Exactly three months ago, on Sept. 22, we officially launched Billboard Español with Colombian star Camilo on our first digital cover. We started literally from zero.

Today, after only 90 days, we publish over 40 original stories per week to the site, boast over a quarter of a million monthly visits to billboardespanol.com and are growing our number of visits and users by 20% month to month.

Thanks to music fans who speak Spanish in every corner of the world, Billboard Español is a hit.

Given what we’ve attained in terms of numbers, it’d be logical to say that launching Billboard Español was a business decision. But this is, first and foremost, an initiative that comes from the heart.  

When I came to work at Billboard, 20 years ago (yes, unreal), I felt my mission was to “translate” our music, our culture and our artists to the mainstream, English-speaking world. I looked around me and I couldn’t understand why major media companies ignored what happened musically in Spanish. The lack of interest extended to other areas, like film and television. We were virtually invisible. It felt like language was an unbreachable barrier.

But in Billboard I found a powerful tool: a media brand that was recognized as the “Bible” of the music industry. And within it, a platform where I could constantly generate content about Latin music and its artists. We devoted the last two decades to growing this platform and opening the eyes and ears of our readers to the sounds of our artists.

From one a column a week, we went to a page, several pages, a Latin department and a wide array of coverage that includes a vast menu of videos, social media and reporters in the Latin world, in addition to the Billboard Latin Music Awards and, of course, our unparalleled Billboard Latin Music Week.

We’ve had more than 40 Latin artists on the cover of Billboard and we’ve made history. We were the first English-language media brand to have a reggaeton star on its cover (Daddy Yankee in 2005), the first and only to have J Balvin and Nicky Jam together on a cover, and the first to join Jennifer Lopez with Maluma. The list goes on and on. This year alone, Romeo Santos, Maluma, Grupo Firme and Sebastian Yatra — four artists representing four different Latin music genres — were on our cover, in addition to Camilo.

The final flourish, of course, was Bad Bunny on the cover of our No. 1s issue. Not only was he the first Latin artist to ever grace our No. 1 cover issue, but he was also the first artist to be featured on simultaneous Billboard covers in English and Spanish.

Billboard Español is the latest link in this long chain of achievements, and it’s perhaps the most significant, for we are covering Latin music in two languages. In addition to our extraordinary Latin music team, we’ve built an excellent editorial team for Billboard Español, with Sigal Ratner-Arias, a respected veteran of entertainment and music reporting, as deputy editor.

We are literally creating a new way of covering music, in our language.

Today, Spanish is the second most-spoken language in the United States; according to the U.S. Census, more than 41 million people speak it at home. And music in Spanish is the second most listened to music in the world, only after music in English.

That means that for 2023, there is only room for us to grow, expanding our coverage of Latin music on all our Billboard platforms, including Billboard Español.

The best is yet to come!

Leila Cobo

Chief Content Officer, Billboard Latin/Español