Ella Langley tops Luminate midyear songs chart as Spanish streams surge
Luminate’s 2026 midyear report puts Langley at No. 1 and finds Spanish-language music now accounts for 9.4% of U.S. streams.
By Poppy Nakagawa · Culture Writer
3 min read
Ella Langley has the biggest U.S. song of 2026 so far, and it is not close, according to Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report.
Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” ranks No. 1 on Luminate’s midyear songs chart with 629,000 sales-equivalent units, nearly twice the total of Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which sits at No. 2 with 347,000. Luminate’s chart measures digital song sales plus on-demand audio streaming equivalents.
The midyear tally also shows two artists breaking out with serious chart muscle. Langley appears twice in the top 10, at No. 1 with “Choosin’ Texas” and No. 4 with “Be Her.” Dean also lands two slots, with “Man I Need” at No. 2 and “So Easy (to Fall in Love)” at No. 10.
Luminate’s top 10 for the first half of 2026 includes:
- Ella Langley, “Choosin’ Texas,” 629,000
- Olivia Dean, “Man I Need,” 347,000
- Alex Warren, “Ordinary,” 339,000
- Ella Langley, “Be Her,” 312,520
- Huntr/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, “Golden,” 312,510
- Bruno Mars, “I Just Might,” 306,000
- Bad Bunny, “DtMF,” 278,000
- PinkPantheress and Zara Larsson, “Stateside,” 277,000
- Taylor Swift, “The Fate of Ophelia,” 268,100
- Olivia Dean, “So Easy (to Fall in Love),” 268,000
Three tracks from 2025, by Alex Warren, Huntr/X and Bad Bunny, remain in the top 10. Variety noted that holdovers are common on midyear charts. The publication also said Luminate now includes background music such as “Rain Sounds for Sleeping” in its chart, although Variety does not count those tracks for its own year-end Hitmakers ranking.
Spanish-language listening keeps climbing
Luminate’s report points to a broader shift in U.S. listening habits. Spanish-language music accounted for 9.4% of total on-demand audio and video streams in the U.S. in the first half of 2026, close to one in every 10 streams.
English-language consumption, meanwhile, dropped to 87.1%, which Luminate described as a new low. American artists still account for more than two-thirds of U.S. streams, according to the report.
R&B and hip-hop remain the biggest force in U.S. audio streaming, making up roughly one in four streams. Luminate said the category is seeing more competition from expanding genres, including dance and electronic music.
Across the world, on-demand audio music streaming rose 9.8% year over year in the first half of 2026, reaching 2.8 trillion streams, according to Luminate. Outside the U.S., streams grew 11.8% to 2.0 trillion.
In the U.S., on-demand audio streams rose 4.8% to 732.7 billion. Luminate said dance and electronic was the country’s largest growth genre for the period, with John Summit and Disco Lines among the artists leading that rise.
CDs get a K-pop-powered lift
Physical music also had a lively first half. Luminate said U.S. CD sales jumped 16% to 16.3 million units, helped by K-pop’s strong physical-sales market. Even without K-pop, CD sales were up 6.7%, according to the report.
The report also tied screen exposure to music consumption. Luminate said the Netflix documentary “The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel” helped drive an 11% increase in the band’s U.S. streams and an 8% global increase during the week it arrived on the platform.
Luminate CEO Rob Jonas said the 2026 report is the company’s first midyear edition to combine music, film and television, arguing that the businesses are no longer as separate as they once were.
This story draws on original reporting from Variety.