What audience data says about the 2026 Latin Grammy nominees

Kristian Gorenc Z

Oct 21, 2026

Ahead of the Latin Grammys, the nominee lists offer listeners a way to explore the music up for recognition. Streaming services also provide a record of how audiences respond to that music. A song’s play count shows how often it has been streamed, while an artist’s following gives a sense of how many people have chosen to keep up with them.

Those figures offer a starting point for comparing the nominees before awards night. Viberate, a music analytics platform, analyzed all 10 Record of the Year recordings and 11 Best New Artist nominees to identify the strongest candidates under a set of audience-data criteria. The research uses observations through Oct. 11, 2026.

The take place Nov. 12, with the Latin Recording Academy’s voting members choosing the winners. This data comparison looks at the audiences around the nominated music near the end of final voting, which closed on Oct. 12.

The two categories produce different kinds of races. Record of the Year is closely contested at the top, while Best New Artist produces a more stable leader across the alternative scoring tests.

How the comparison works

Viberate checked the nominees against their recording and artist profiles, then used a separate score out of 100 for each category. Every nominee within a category faces the same measures and weights. All values used in the scores are dated Oct. 11.

Record of the Year focuses on the nominated song. Its accumulated Spotify streams make up 35% of the score, and the increase between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11 contributes 15%. Spotify playlist reach and accumulated Shazams each receive 25%.

Playlist reach adds up the followers of playlists containing a song. That figure describes potential exposure, with some people following several of the same playlists. Shazams count the times a recording has been identified through the service. Together with streams, these measures show different aspects of how a song has reached listeners.

For Best New Artist, Spotify monthly listeners account for 35% and Spotify followers for 15%. Total views on the artist’s linked YouTube channel receive 25%, while Instagram and TikTok followers each contribute 12.5%. The artist comparison uses current values because the available histories vary too much to compare long-term growth across every nominee.

Each measure is scored according to the nominee’s position in that category. The lowest value receives zero, and the highest 100, with evenly spaced scores in between. Equal values share their average position. The weighted scores are added together, and exact ties share a rank.

This gives different platform numbers a common scale. It also means the size of a raw lead disappears from the calculation: A small advantage can earn the same step in points as a large one. The weights were fixed before the final rankings were calculated, and only measures with complete coverage entered the scores.

Record of the Year: “La Perla” leads a close race in the data

Viberate’s analysis puts Rosalía’s “La Perla” first with 95.00 points. By Oct. 11, the recording had reached 385.72 million Spotify streams, the highest total among the nominees. It also led in playlist reach, at 26.58 million, and had 1.31 million Shazams.

Karol G and Marco Antonio Solís’ “Coleccionando Heridas” follows with 90.56 points. Its 382.30 million Spotify streams place it less than 1% behind “La Perla” on accumulated listening.

Looking at the final week adds detail to that close comparison. Between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11, “Coleccionando Heridas” added 5.21 million Spotify streams, the largest increase among the nominees. “La Perla” recorded an increase of 2.45 million over the same seven days.

Recent listening carries 15% of the published score. The higher accumulated stream total for “La Perla,” together with its lead in playlist reach and Shazams, gives it first place overall. When all four measures receive equal weight, the two recordings tie at 91.67 points.

Milo J’s “Niño” ranks third with 75.00 points and 240.01 million accumulated Spotify streams. Fourth-place “Desde Que Te Tengo,” by Carín León, scores 72.78. The recording added 3.36 million streams during the shared week, the second-largest increase in the field. That was a 5.25% rise over its Oct. 4 total, giving it the highest percentage increase among the nominated songs during the period.

Elena Rose’s “ALMA” completes the top five at 52.78 points.

The analysis also checked how changing the scoring choices affected the order. “La Perla” remains first when each measure is removed individually and when the baseline weights vary by 20%. The equal-weight tie shows why its lead needs to be read alongside the criteria used to produce it.

Best New Artist: ARIA VEGA has the strongest combined score

According to Viberate’s analysis, Aria Vega leads Best New Artist with 95.75 points. Her 7.91 million monthly Spotify listeners are the highest in the nominee group. Views on her linked YouTube channel total 196.64 million, also placing her first on that measure.

Her Instagram following reaches 928,763, the largest among the nominees. That first-place position contributes to a score built from several platforms. These figures cover the audiences and content associated with the linked accounts; the YouTube total includes the channel’s history.

Macariø Martínez finishes second with 86.75 points. He leads the group in Spotify followers, at 338,459, and has the largest TikTok following, at 1.64 million. Aria Vega has 197,260 Spotify followers and 1.28 million TikTok followers.

Macariø receives the maximum points on those two follower measures, which together account for 27.5% of the score. Aria Vega’s positions across all five measures give her a nine-point lead overall.

Maye takes third place with 73.75 points. She has 1.17 million monthly Spotify listeners, and her linked YouTube channel has accumulated 94.78 million views. With 3,759 TikTok followers, she places tenth on that measure among the 11 nominees. Kendall Peña ranks fourth overall at 63.75 points, followed by Zeca Veloso at 61.25.

Aria Vega stays first in all 53 alternatives tested for this category. The checks included equal weights and removing each measure in turn. Using the seven-day increase in YouTube channel views in place of the accumulated total also kept her in the lead.

A separate look at Spotify monthly listeners shows how the audience changed during the final week examined. Aria Vega’s figure rose by 456,147, or 6.12%, between Oct. 4 and Oct. 11. Dora Sanches recorded the largest percentage increase, rising 10.31% from 39,428 to 43,494. These changes compare rolling audience counts, which include people entering and leaving the measurement window. They sit outside the main artist score.

What these results can tell listeners

Only measures with consistent coverage across the nominees entered the published scores. Missing values were not estimated or treated as zero, and metrics that could not support a fair comparison were left out.

Accumulated plays and channel views depend partly on how long the music has been available. The scores leave release age and promotional resources unadjusted, and audiences can overlap across services. Related Spotify measures together receive a fixed 50% share in each category.

Under the published criteria, Viberate’s data picks are Rosalía’s “La Perla” for Record of the Year and Aria Vega for Best New Artist. The first race remains sensitive to how recent activity is weighted, while Aria Vega’s lead held across every alternative scoring test used in the analysis.

The Latin Grammy winners will ultimately be decided by Academy voters rather than audience metrics. Once the awards are announced on Nov. 12, the results will offer a chance to compare those voting decisions with the streaming, discovery, and audience signals measured in the weeks before the ceremony.

Source of music data: Viberate.com
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