Reggaeton: social decay or simply a genre running out of steam?

Thirty years of reggaeton: social decay or just noise?

Is reggaeton a symptom of social decay, or just a music genre that has been on the market far too long? The question is not new, but the debate is back in the spotlight with an uncomfortable fact: the formula has been dominating the industry for nearly three decades and, unlike rock or rap, shows no signs of stepping aside.

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A diagnosis mixing aesthetics, politics and the middle class

Some argue that reggaeton is not a music genre at all, but an industrial product designed to nullify the listener's critical capacity. The thesis is as sweeping as it is hard to prove: an opaque, primitive, mass-produced sound that does not invite you to develop your own taste, but to fit into the machine. According to this view, the disappearance of urban tribes —once a cultural counterweight— would have cleared the way for this music.

The argument has a political offshoot that should not be ignored. The left stands accused of having demonized rock, indie or heavy metal as Eurocentric expressions, opening the door to a supposedly more popular aesthetic. The response was swift: calling rock Eurocentric is a mental wank. What has actually peine, the counterargument goes, is more prosaic: genres burn out. Rock is over, rap is over, pop is over. And what remains is a reggaeton which, garbage though it may be, is all that is left.

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The thirty-year anomaly

The fact that carries the most weight in this debate is longevity. Every genre and trend has had a limited lifespan, but none has lasted as long as reggaeton. The joke is heading for its 30th year. And in terms of the cultural industry, that is an anomaly hard to explain by musical quality alone.

The most reasonable explanation is not cultural but economic: reggaeton is a perfectly industrialized product, with a cheap, standardized, exportable production formula. It does not need to build community or identity. It only needs speakers. And that makes it almost immune to the wear and tear that finished off other genres.

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From cultural diagnosis to social malaise

The debate, however, does not stop at the music. It quickly drifts toward a broader malaise: the aesthetics of today's cars, clothes, architecture, dogs in parks while the homeless sleep on the street. All of it to the beat of an autotune circus. It is the realization that social decay is not only audible, but visual and material too.

Some qualify that the decay is not social but intellectual. Others reply that we call pretty much anything a society. The diagnosis ends up halfway: reggaeton would be the musical soundtrack of an era that is not quite sure what it is listening to, but listens to it on loop anyway.

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A debate without consensus and with little data

The most striking thing about this discussion is the absence of data. There are no sales figures, no streaming counts, no average audience age. There are opinions, plenty of them, and a couple of personal anecdotes. But the phenomenon is big enough for someone to study it with numbers: how much reggaeton earns, how much listening time it accumulates, what share of Spanish music production it represents.

Until that happens, the debate will remain what it is: a clash of apocalyptic diagnoses and lazy defenses, with a single point of agreement: reggaeton has been playing for far too long. And it does not look like it will stop any time soon.