Constructing a New Music Industry

Abstract

In place of a large-scale fad, boom, or trend, the Brazilian artists who have found Anglophone publics in the 2010s have done so through a more dispersed approach than the watershed moments that characterized Brazil’s breakthroughs of the past. Brazilian artists utilize new strategies of co-branding and marketing to break through to Anglophone publics, due in part to an explosion of musical diversity over the last few decades. As a result of new mediation and distribution paths, Brazilian artists have upended old expectations for how to find success abroad, resulting in the looser iteration of the country’s musical brand. Yet old stereotypes of what counts as Brazilian music have adapted to a new music marketplace, emphasizing Brazil’s links to a new iteration of Afro-diasporic music.