Why Brazil Needs Its Own Music Strategy

Brazil is one of the biggest music markets in the world, and understanding its unique ecosystem is essential to unlocking the opportunities within it.

The first thing to understand about it is that you can’t simply think of it as Latin America. Yes, that’s part of who we are, but Brazil is large enough, and different enough, to be considered a category of its own. It is a Portuguese-speaking market, not a Spanish-speaking one. Our charts are dominated by domestic music. Our biggest genres are local. And the way music moves across the country depends heavily on region, culture, language, and history.

That’s a big part of why Brazil can’t be approached with a generic regional strategy. According to IFPI, Brazil is the eighth-largest music market in the world. It has more than 200 million people, a fast-growing digital music economy, and one of the highest domestic shares of any major market. Nearly 90% of the tracks in Brazil’s Top 200 are local songs. That domestic strength is what makes Brazil so exciting. It’s also what makes it so complex.

What works in Rio de Janeiro doesn’t necessarily work in the Northeast. What’s taking off in São Paulo may not reflect what’s happening in the South. Each region has its own genres, business style, audience behavior, and way of building artists.

Sertanejo, Brazilian funk, pagode and forró are often thought of as the most popular genres. But they’re constantly moving, absorbing new sounds, and evolving with each generation. Forró has its own family tree, with piseiro, brega, and arrocha branching off in different directions. Funk sounds different depending on which part of the country it comes from. And new genres like agronejo can come out of nowhere.

That constant renewal is one of Brazil’s greatest strengths, and also a challenge for business development because you can’t really get a sense of what’s taking off if you’re outside the country. You need people who understand what’s happening inside each ecosystem before it becomes obvious. That’s not something you can really do well through data alone. Speaking the language, understanding the culture, and investing in local intelligence is what earns trust in a market where each region is developing at its own pace.

We see this play out all the time. For example, Toque Dez, an artist from the northeastern scene, recently dominated Downtown Artist & Label Services’  top five internal global charts in a single week, and his album is now charting on Spotify’s Weekly Top Albums in Brazil. This is an artist that hasn’t crossed into the mainstream, yet, we still consider it very regional. This is a real example of how strong and relevant a regional artist can be and how having a local team is important to help maximize an artist’s full potential.

Another example is that the sertanejo genre continues to prove the power of regional music hubs in Brazil, particularly around Goiânia. Cleber & Cauan released their new project, “Resenha na Fazenda,” shot entirely on a farm to authentically capture the genre’s true lifestyle and cultural essence. They promoted it by seeding the music with niche sertanejo pages and influencers. As a result, the single “Mil Adjetivos” hit #67 on Spotify Brazil and pushed the duo into the Top 100 Daily Artists nationally. These examples highlight why regional strategies are critical in Brazil and why local expertise is highly valuable.

Regional complexity also shows up in how music is consumed and how the business develops. In some parts of the country, artists and audiences have been using streaming platforms for years. In others, YouTube remains especially relevant due to its accessibility and ease of use, and some places are still moving from piracy-driven consumption into the formal digital economy. All of that affects how artists build audiences and how revenue is generated.

It’s easy to look at Brazil and see one of the largest music economies in the world, huge streaming activity, and massive domestic consumption. But from a business development perspective, Brazil needs strategies built for Brazil. It requires presence and people on the ground. We’re still in the early chapters of what Brazil’s music industry can become. There’s room to grow in streaming, in regional artist development, in international exports, and in the professionalization of local scenes. But capturing Brazil’s full potential requires a strategy tailored to its audience, culture, and industry dynamics. The growth will come from treating Brazil as what it is: a massive, distinct, domestic-first music ecosystem with many markets inside it.