A song can be available everywhere and still find most of its audience close to home. In a new report, Chartmetric examines where music from Mexico, Japan, Brazil, India, and Nigeria gains traction, using Spotify chart appearances and the geographic makeup of artists’ YouTube audiences to trace five different patterns of growth.
The clearest regional story comes from Mexico. Between 2021 and 2025, 70.6% of its Spotify regional Top 50 chart entries were in foreign markets, the highest share among the five countries studied. Regional Mexican music has built a network that extends into the U.S. and across Latin America, including Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. “International” success here often means deep connections among neighboring markets.
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Japan shows how much room there can be between a powerful home market and a foreign chart presence. Japanese artists amassed 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. That does not mean Japanese music is staying put: artists such as Ado and YOASOBI are building audiences through anime, gaming and online fandom, routes that a Spotify chart snapshot cannot fully capture.
In Brazil, foreign Spotify regional-chart entries fell 44.8% between 2021 and 2025. Yet the number of distinct Brazilian tracks appearing on those charts rose from 26 to 44, and the number of artists from 18 to 30. More acts reached foreign charts, but appeared there less often overall. Chartmetric also found that 82.4% of the YouTube subscribers for its cohort of top Brazilian artists were in Brazil in 2025. For a market that large, a career can scale without relying on a sustained overseas breakthrough.
India has a different kind of momentum abroad: its 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 sharply, 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. Growth across borders has a geography, even at this scale.
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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. There is a qualification in the full report, though: a huge foreign chart spike in 2023 gave way to far fewer Top 50 appearances in 2024 and 2025. Breadth over several years does not mean every year is equally strong.
For independent artists and their teams, the practical question is less “Are we global?” than where is the audience returning? A neighboring country, a diaspora corridor or a large home market may each offer a different route to lasting listeners and viable shows. Foreign chart entries show visibility; audience location and repeat activity help show where to invest next.
Read Chartmetric’s full The New Sound of Global Music report.
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