A track can be available worldwide and still draw most of its listeners from one region. A new Chartmetric report maps how music from Mexico, Japan, Brazil, India and Nigeria travels by combining Spotify chart appearances with the geographic makeup of artists’ YouTube audiences.
Mexico and Japan: Two Definitions of Reach
Mexico recorded the highest share of foreign chart activity among the five countries. Between 2021 and 2025, 70.6% of its Spotify regional Top 50 entries landed in foreign markets. Regional Mexican music has built a network that extends into the U.S. and across Latin America, including Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. For Mexican music, international reach frequently depends on close ties with nearby markets.
Japan illustrates how a strong domestic market can sit alongside a small foreign chart footprint. Japanese artists accumulated roughly 86,000 track-days on Japan’s Spotify Top 50 from 2021 into 2026, but only 2.9% of those domestic chart appearances coincided with an appearance abroad. Artists such as Ado and YOASOBI are still reaching audiences through anime, gaming and online fandom, routes that a Spotify chart snapshot cannot fully capture.
Brazil, India and Nigeria: Scale, Diaspora and Volatility
In Brazil, foreign Spotify regional-chart entries fell 44.8% between 2021 and 2025. Even so, the number of distinct Brazilian tracks appearing on those charts rose from 26 to 44, and the number of artists rose from 18 to 30. More acts reached foreign charts, but appeared there less often overall. Chartmetric also found that 82.4% of YouTube subscribers for its cohort of top Brazilian artists were in Brazil in 2025. For a market that large, a career can scale without a sustained overseas breakthrough.
India’s foreign Spotify regional-chart entries rose from 1,593 in 2021 to 7,736 in 2025. Chartmetric’s count of Indian artists in its top Superstar tier also rose from 25 in 2021 to 154 in 2025. Much of the international chart activity remains concentrated in markets such as Pakistan, the UAE, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines. Even at this scale, cross-border growth follows a specific geography.
Nigeria has the broadest cumulative foreign reach in the comparison. Nigerian music appeared on regional Spotify Top 50 charts in 46 foreign markets over the period studied. Chartmetric estimates that more than 90% of the 2025 YouTube audiences for Rema, Burna Boy and Tems were outside Nigeria. The full report notes a qualification: a large foreign chart spike in 2023 gave way to far fewer Top 50 appearances in 2024 and 2025. Sustained breadth over several years does not guarantee equal strength in any single year.
What the Patterns Mean for Artists
For independent artists and their teams, the practical question is less whether a release is global than where the audience is returning. A neighboring country, a diaspora corridor or a large home market may each offer a different route to lasting listeners and viable shows. Chart placements provide visibility, but audience location and repeat listening indicate where investment may be most effective.
Chartmetric published the findings in its full report, The New Sound of Global Music.
