Is country the next area for Hispanic music lovers?

The Nashville Business Journal has an article about the Country Music Association making an effort to attract Hispanic listeners. The article outlines that CMA has realized that its future growth in part will be attributed to Hispanics; so, it's important to get listeners.

The article also discusses a "debate" among industry insiders about whether country music should seek to attract Hispanic listeners with country songs in English or in Spanish.

An interesting question for sure. What the article doesn't really get into is what segment of the Hispanic population (remember, we came from more than 20 Spanish-speaking countries) is most interested in this genre. To me, clearly, it is Mexicans. Perhaps others like Colombians where cumbia and vallenato music is very popular. But, it must skew highly Mexican.

Just like country tends to attract folks in the U.S. from the south (although this is changing), they will have a heck of a time attracting, say, Dominicans or others from the Caribbean, who tend to listen to the more traditional genres.

I also don't think they would necessarily need to put country music in Spanish as it kinda' already exists, it's called banda or norteño music. So, going in Spanish competes head on with this genre.

The low hanging fruit here is Mexicans. They should start there and then seek to branch out versus taking an all encompassing or national approach, as they concede in the article is very expensive.