The impact of Cowboys fringants and Patrick Watson goes far beyond Quebec, as evidenced by data collected by Spotify in preparation for the Francophonie Summit scheduled for October 4 and 5.
The band of the late singer Karl Tremblay was the most listened to French-speaking group of the year in all of North America on the largest streaming platform. Quebecers Patrick Watson and Souldia respectively occupy the second and fourth ranks of the top 5, completed by the Belgian Stromae (3rd) and the Frenchwoman Indila (5th).
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A melancholic hymn
The popularity of Patrick Watson, the vast majority of whose works are in English, is also enough to make your eyes widen. The melancholic I will leave you wordsdating from 2010, but which went viral on social networks more recently, was the most listened to French song in the non-French-speaking world. In total, it has nearly 950 million plays on Spotify.
This megasuccess propelled the Montrealer to second place among the most listened to French-speaking artists in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region.
French is popular
The streaming giant has monitored the reach of French-language music closely in recent years and the results are very encouraging. Between 2019 and 2024, listening to songs written in the language of Molière jumped by 94% worldwide. In all, from July 2023 to August 2024, more than a sixth of Spotify users, or more than 100 million people, listened to content in French. Of this number, 39 million came from non-French speaking markets.
“While French artists particularly shone throughout the summer on the international scene with records recorded on the platform, they are not alone in representing the French language,” defended the general director of the Europe section of the west of Spotify, Antoine Morin, in a press release. Quebecois, Belgian and Algerian performers also contribute to this dynamic, and the success of their titles recorded in French continues to grow throughout the world.
Furthermore, podcasts in French have also seen a significant increase in popularity since 2019, i.e. 2,687%.
As for audio books in French, the novel Alissby Patrick Senécal, is first in class in Quebec and Canada. The parlora story written by Félix Séguin and Eric Thibault recounting the story of Maurice “Mom” Boucher, was also popular, both in the Belle Province (5th) and in the rest of the country (3rd).
