For decades, a traditional (and, at times, formulaic) sound defined and powered regional Mexican music, the umbrella term that includes subgenres like banda, norteño and mariachi. But today, música mexicana, as it is also known, is booming (according to Luminate’s midyear music report, it fueled Latin music’s growth in the first six months of the year) in large part thanks to the limitless creative visions of its most prominent producers.

This school of hit-makers — who range widely in both style, from Jersey corridos to synth-powered regional ballads, and age — is crafting bold sounds and genre-spanning hybrids, setting the tone for an ever-evolving genre as it adapts to its new global appeal and reach.

Ernesto “Neto” Fernández

The Texas-born veteran has long defined regional Mexican movements, like the quebradita explosion of the 1990s. But when he tried to be “experimental” in the past, “it wasn’t accepted — our hands were tied,” says Fernández, 51. “Now everyone is open-minded and that helped me branch out.”

Among his biggest recent successes: Peso Pluma, whose swaggering lyrics and high-energy sound helped usher in a new era for regional Mexican music and whose signature style was heavily informed by working with the producer. “Very early on in the process, I start hearing and imagining where instruments will go,” explains Fernández, who incorporated charchetas (alto horns) and trombones into corridos tumbados, a subgenre that started with just guitars. “My part is to make sure that instruments don’t compete but to have them each have their own place. I like to hear things a certain way and how I want it to sound.”

It’s safe to say Fernández — who won producer of the year at the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards thanks to tracks he worked on for Peso and Xavi — knows a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t. Today, he’s one of regional Mexican music’s most trusted producers, also working with artists like Tito Double P.

Danny Felix

Felix’s production career got off to an unorthodox start. “I was taking English songs and making them regional,” he says. “[Artificial intelligence] didn’t exist back then, so I remember one day, I found Beyoncé’s vocals on YouTube and followed along with a guitar. I was like, ‘This sounds cool.’ ” It sparked his passion for elevating songs with prickly acoustic guitars and led to him pioneering corridos tumbados and producing the subgenre’s first big star, Natanael Cano.

While guitar-driven subgenres like sierreño already existed, corridos tumbados’ guitars make heads bob like a hip-hop beat — even Bad Bunny couldn’t resist joining Cano on 2019’s Felix-produced “Soy el Diablo – Remix.” “Guitars are my thing,” adds the Arizona native, who’s in his early 30s. “People try to do what I do and I love that, but I have a unique way of hitting the strings that you can tell it’s me right away.”

The sound Felix developed has evolved over the years, with artists like Peso Pluma adding different instruments, and he has also adapted his guitars to singers he is producing for today, like Xavi, who pioneered tumbados románticos. “His range of singing is completely different,” Felix says, “so you have to play [the guitar] a certain way to complement his vocals.”

Armenta

Penning and producing hits for Fuerza Regida like “Harley Quinn” and “Bebe Dame,” Armenta, 24, went from thinking a producer was mainly a beat-maker to understanding that there’s much more to the craft. “As a producer, you give it your soul, your essence, and when that goes hand in hand with songwriting, it becomes magic,” says Armenta, who has deviated from tradition by incorporating electronic music, loops and pads (or synthesizers) into his productions. “Everything used to be very rigid; the beats and rhythms were the same. Now it’s a genre for young people, and we achieved this through influences such as rap, hip-hop and other urban genres where it’s no longer just about making regional music but about making music, period.”

“Harley Quinn,” a 2023 collaboration with dance producer Marshmello, turned heads with its EDM-leaning sound. “We called it ‘Jersey corrido,’ ” Armenta says proudly. “In our search for the perfect harmony between house and EDM, we found this rhythm where we can play it with a tololoche [a Mexican folk instrument that is a variant of the double bass] and finish it off with charchetas. All the folklore that this song carries is very beautiful, and it really opened our eyes to the fact that the sky is the limit.”

Frank Rio

A fan of the stripped-down melodic approach to regional Mexican music, Rio was eager to experiment with the style, but “I didn’t want to force it on anyone,” he says, having previously worked mainly with non-regional Mexican acts like A.Chal and Jhayco. Then he met Ivan Cornejo and they instantly connected. “We’re emo boys,” Rio says with a laugh. Cornejo’s stirring vocal delivery meshed perfectly with Rio’s equally emotional production style. “When I’m part of a record from start to finish, there’s definitely a lot of emotion,” says Rio, 32. “Whether sad, happy or in between, I always try to make it a journey.”

Cornejo’s brooding regional ballads with an alternative edge — like “La Última Vez,” one of the first songs he and Rio did together — defy música mexicana standards. “I don’t want to say I’m responsible for this new sound because I’m sure it wasn’t the first time someone had added synths to Mexican music, but for me, it was a big eye-opener about what you can do in Mexican music, and now it’s tough to identify what we do just as that,” Rio says. “It has never crossed my mind that I could have a limit, especially with Ivan. Focusing on [creative] freedom means constant experimentation in the studio with him. I’ll do four or five versions of a song, from alternative to sierreño, to find the version that works.”

Moises López

López never imagined getting into producing. But when he joined Fuerza Regida four years ago and got in the studio with the band, he saw producers create a song from start to finish and thought: “I can do that and I want my credit, too.”

While his career as a producer is only just starting — the 22-year-old was initially brought on as the band’s tololoche player and officially became one of its producers two years ago — López is already leaving a mark on regional Mexican thanks to his work on Fuerza Regida’s 2025 album, ­111XPANTIA, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, becoming the highest-charting Spanish-language album by a duo or group ever. “Building a song from scratch is like a puzzle,” says López, who gets animated talking about his work in the studio. “The goal for me is always to experiment and find what the next big sound or wave will be but also keeping our corridos roots.”

Fuerza’s producing crew — which also includes frontman Jesús Ortiz Paz — took it a bit further this time around, incorporating synths behind instruments for a punchier sound. It also did something the band had never done before: “We added samples from other genres,” López says. “In ‘Tu Sancho,’ you’ll hear Ellie Goulding’s ‘Don’t Say a Word.’ We realized it was time to add samples to our music, which will mark a major shift in our genre.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.

Chord Music Partners said on Thursday that global private investment firm Searchlight Capital Partners joined Universal Music Group as a strategic investor in its music rights acquisition and management venture.

Formed in 2021 through an inital partnership with KKR, Chord owns more than 60,000 copyrights, including stakes in the Fleetwood Mac hits “Dreams” and “Landslide,” the catalog of OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder, and most recently acquired a 49% stake of Big Loud’s stake in Morgan Wallen‘s early masters. As of 2024, Chord is majority owned by Dundee Partners, the investment office of the Hendel family, and UMG has an equity stake worth more than 26%.

The investment of funds managed by Searchlight, a firm with more than $18 billion in assets under management, will help Chord find and execute on recorded music and publishing rights acquisitions faster to achieve greater scale, according to a statement from the companies.

“Searchlight’s expertise, network and ability to meaningfully contribute toward expanding Chord’s premier [intellectual property] portfolio make Searchlight an ideal strategic partner for our next chapter,” Sam Hendel, Dundee Partners’ managing principal and co-founder of Chord, said in a statement.

Searchlight partner Darren Glatt said they were attracted to Chord’s diversified platform and its portfolio of rights to works by The Weeknd, Lorde and David Guetta, which he said has “evolved Chord into the desired home for the works and legacies of the world’s premier artists.”

The joint investment and catalog management platform model has become a popular way for major music companies to aggressively bid for highly desireable music rights in a way that minimizes their reliance on their own balance sheet. Assets that are bought through Chord, like Big Loud’s share of the masters to Morgan Wallen’s first couple albums, are administered through Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) and recorded music through UMG’s Virgin Music Group (VMG).

Warner Music Group revealed a similarly structured joint venture with Bain Capital worth $1.2 billion thi ssummer, of which Warner owns 50% and earns revenue from managing, marketing and administering the assets.

Boyd Muir, chief operating officer at UMG, which recently invested an additional 30 million euros in Chord, said Chord is part of their long-term strategic investment plans.

“The structure is working exactly as we envisioned – enabling us to move quickly to acquire high-quality catalogs, without significant capital allocation over time,” UMG Chief Operating Officer Boyd Muir said on a call last month discussing the company’s quarterly earnings. “Chord is successfully raising capital and building a strong deal pipeline.”

Searchlight was advised on this transaction by Lazard and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.

MCA acquired Parker McCollum’s full recorded catalog, including the albums The Limestone Kid and Probably Wrong, as part of a deal that extended McCollum’s recording deal with the label. McCollum recently released his fifth studio album, a self-titled project, which includes his top 20 Billboard Country Airplay hit, “What Kinda Man.” He first signed with the label (then called UMG Nashville) in 2019. – Jessica Nicholson

Live Nation acquired New Zealand festival producer Team Event, the company behind the country’s two-day music festival Electric Church. In a statement, Team Event director Callam Mitchell called the acquisition “an incredible opportunity to secure the long-term future of our business. Access to talent and the expertise from such a large global organisation will only take us to new heights.”

Chordal, a platform dedicated to modernizing synch licensing, making it “faster, more transparent, and more equitable for all rights holders,” according to a press release, has added several new licensing partners to its platform, including Nettwerk Music Group, Marathon Artists, Futures, Neon Gold, Avenue A, Anara Publishing, Mesh, DEEWEE, Involved Publishing, Maktub, EPM Music, Lo Fi Music and Bad Owl Records. Chordal previously struck deals with Kobalt, [PIAS], Reservoir Media, Primary Wave and Believe. In July, Chordal also announced a multi-year deal with TikTok that integrated InstantClear, its pre-clearance licensing system, into TikTok’s commercial music library to help artists, publishers and labels more easily monetize music in branded content.

ROXi, described in a press release as “the world’s first fully interactive TV music channel” that offers music videos on demand “on NextGen enabled televisions with an interactive app-like experience,” signed a deal with local news and sports provider Sinclair that will bring ROXi’s music channel to 31 U.S. TV markets, with additional markets coming later in the year. According to the release, U.S. broadcast business group Pearl TV will assist in rolling out ROXi in non-Sinclair markets. ROXi’s catalog boasts 100 million licensed songs through partnerships with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Merlin.

AEG and American Express (Amex) expanded their longtime global partnership across venues, festivals, touring, ticketing and sports. Through the deal, Amex will be AEG’s official payment partner across more than 40 assets and four continents, with card members enjoying festival perks including exclusive merchandise, offers and onsite experiences. Through the American Express Venue Collection program, card members will also receive benefits including ticket access, dedicated entrances and an exclusive concession offer. Amex will also remain the presenting partner of AEG’s BST Hyde Park festival in London.

TITOL, an artist brand and merchandise company, signed a strategic partnership with Complex designed to foster exclusive collaborations between TITOL’s roster of artists and brands across all Complex verticals, including events, merch and content, including magazine covers and the annual ComplexCon, which will be headlined this year by TITOL clients Yeat and Young Thug.

Spotify integrated with self-driving car service Waymo in three cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, with more to be added soon. Through the deal, Waymo customers will be able to link their Spotify accounts to Waymo via the Waymo app or in-car screens, allowing them to play their personalized playlists during rides.

“I was a few mistakes away from being some annoying guy at the bar who’s like, ‘I used to work with Post Malone,’ ” admits Ryan Vojtesak — the chart-topping producer better known as Charlie Handsome who has, in fact, quietly accumulated dozens of hits during the past decade. But after about eight years in Los Angeles, Vojtesak felt like he’d made the most of his time there; his list of credits, including one-offs with Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and Drake, had swelled, and he thought he had accomplished what he had set out to do in the city: “Get hot there and then move somewhere else.”

In 2021, he moved to Nashville, and since then, his career — and mentality — have shifted from sheer output to what he describes as “locking in.” Since moving, he estimates he has turned down offers to executive-produce 15 albums — “and pretty much all of them were artists that, if you would’ve asked me eight, nine years ago, I would’ve been like, ‘Holy s–t, this is a dream come true.’ ”

Born in Atlanta, the now elusive 38-year-old’s “favorite producer” growing up was Kanye West (now known as Ye). By his late teens, Vojtesak felt he had developed a strong enough self-taught skill set to start producing, too, “but I didn’t know anybody.” So he moved to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and worked a construction job — until he met someone at a bank (“legit,” he assures) who kick-started a chain of introductions that included producer Lifted, who previously worked with Ye on “Mercy” and connected Vojtesak with G.O.O.D Music president Che Pope. In 2013, Vojtesak moved to Los Angeles and adopted his own producer moniker (he’s also a songwriter and musician in his own right) and, soon enough, he met two people who knew Ye and T-Pain. “Those were my two connects,” he says.

Still, connections didn’t equate to immediate success. “It was frustrating in the beginning,” he continues. “I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any food. I weighed 50 pounds less because I wasn’t eating. It was like trying to solve a puzzle constantly.”

By 2014, Vojtesak scored his first credit, on Travis Scott’s “Drugs You Should Try It,” off the rapper’s second mixtape. “If you listen to the music, it’s emo,” Vojtesak says, noting that despite racking up early credits in hip-hop — with artists including Post Malone, Lil Uzi Vert, Gunna, Young Thug and Ye (on “Fade” from 2016’s The Life of Pablo) — he transcended any one lane. “As early as 2016, when I was working with Young Thug, we were doing folk songs — not all of them came out, but I was always on that.” He and Post even discussed a country project back in 2015, before Post’s debut album, Stoney, dropped — and nearly 10 years before he released one.

Vojtesak recalls accompanying Post to label meetings and the specific phrases Post’s team would use to market the then-unknown artist. “ ‘Reverse Taylor Swift’ was one, and ‘America’s Champion,’ ” he says with a barely stifled chuckle. “But really, the process is the reverse Taylor Swift, to an extent. Obviously for it to be a full reverse, Taylor needs to drop a rap album. Which I don’t think is going to happen.”

But the idea was there all along: Post Malone, country star. And along with it, Charlie Handsome: Nashville hit-maker.

After nearly a decade in L.A., Vojtesak found himself spending more and more time in Music City. “What happened was when s–t really got going, I got sick of paying taxes,” he admits. “So I weighed my options, and it was Miami or Nashville.” He had already worked with Morgan Wallen a few times — he says he “got lucky” meeting him in 2017 — and recalls thinking, “Morgan Wallen is probably the better artist for me… This could be something different and special and doesn’t have to sound like everything else.”

The first single they co-wrote was the title track to Wallen’s 2018 debut album, If I Know Me. On Wallen’s second project, the 2021 smash Dangerous: The Double Album, Vojtesak co-wrote seven tracks, including lead single “More Than My Hometown” and Vojtesak’s first No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, “Wasted on You.” By Wallen’s third album, 2023’s One Thing at a Time, Vojtesak was credited on 15 tracks, four of which he co-produced, and on this year’s I’m the Problem, he’s credited on 23 tracks, 12 of them as co-producer.

His trajectory with Post has been similar. Vojtesak scored two credits on Stoney (plus one on its deluxe version) and one on 2022’s twelve carat toothache. But for Post’s 2024 foray into country, F-1 Trillion, Vojtesak was credited on all 18 songs, plus the additional nine for the extended edition, F-1 Trillion: Long Bed.

Of the 67 songs he has charted on the Billboard Hot 100 that he has now produced or co-produced, 22 are by Post and 20 are by Wallen, including their collaborative No. 1 smash, “I Had Some Help.” (Vojtesak first topped the chart as a producer in 2022 with Jack Harlow’s “First Class”; he has remained on the Hot 100 Producers chart for 111 weeks, peaking at No. 1 in August 2024 and now sitting at No. 3 on the Aug. 9-dated chart.)

It’s no wonder Vojtesak has locked in with Wallen and Post, two artists who have themselves become friends and collaborators in the past few years and — especially in the case of the former — tend to keep to themselves. (Vojtesak himself admits to leaving his phone on silent “at all times.”)

Perhaps most importantly, both artists have the “gravity factor,” as Vojtesak puts it. “That’s a big part of it for me. I just look for a voice that I really believe in… But everything has to go your way, you know? There were a lot of ones that didn’t work out. Like 2015 me, DM’ing Doja Cat like, ‘Yo, I’m telling you, you could be the biggest artist. We just have to lock in.’ It cold got ignored.”

He’s even more discerning today, especially with young artists. It’s all about “finding the vehicle to move things forward,” he says. “Even with Morgan, the early sessions, maybe even the first session, I was saying, ‘What if we did this?’ And he was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if this is for me.’ And it was like, ‘It’s just not for you yet.’ But it can be — and we can build toward that.

“Every year, I try to meet with young people and see who’s the next person I might be interested in,” Vojtesak continues. “And I already have, as far as music and ideas go, a bunch of stuff that, to me, sounds new. And it sounds like [something that] nobody’s doing.”

That desire to find his next “vehicle for moving things forward” is what led him to launch his own publishing venture, Krispy Pork Gang, which he says is “one of the best in the game” because of his contacts — especially Sony Music Publishing president/head of U.S. A&R Katie Welle (who signed Vojtesak to his publishing deal). “If I don’t know the person, she’ll figure it out,” he says. “If I’m offering you a deal, you’re probably going to have a hit song [that same] year. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel like I was doing my job.” In partnership with Sony, he has signed songwriter-producers Hoskins, Joe Reeves and Jamie McLaughlin.

In Vojtesak’s view, his organic approach to signing talent is just as important as the hits they may help create. “Let’s say a new Justin Bieber single pops off and there’s one name on there that no one’s heard before. They’re going to get a call from all the major publishers,” he says. “And that’s the game side of it. What I do is, if I naturally get in touch with a person and we start working together and I [see] value in it, I might as well sign them now. I want to work with them anyway. I’ve yet to pick someone because they’re the hot thing.”

Vojtesak’s willingness to build with an artist — while being transparent about how to navigate signing offers that come along the way — is a direct result of his own start in the industry, when he had to figure out how the business worked on his own. He remembers being burned in the early 2010s after hearing a song on the radio that he had worked on, only to be told his parts had been rerecorded. “I didn’t have any money at all. Didn’t have a lawyer. I went to get advice from the wrong person and I was just naive,” he recalls. “The advice that was given to me was, ‘If you think you’re this good at music, just do it again.’ ”

Today, he has made it his mission to ensure that any artist, songwriter or producer he works with is never in the same situation. His advice: Hold out on any deal until you have a hit song. “And then you can negotiate for yourself,” he says. “But obviously, surviving is the hard part. Balancing a job and doing music? It sucks. It’s not easy.”

He encourages such professionals to publicly share how much money they are being offered from respective deals. “We allow our peers to get put in compromised situations where they’re not going to make as much money as they should — that happened to me early on and it pissed me off,” he says. “Because there was no transparency, I had no point of reference in my early negotiations. Same with catalog sales. I always ask people, ‘How much did you get?’ And motherf–kers do not want to say. And I’m just like, ‘How is that helpful to anybody?’ ”

In fact, one of the things Vojtesak is most proud of is “having a lot of money now” — not only because it can afford him the luxury of starting a Rolex collection (including one gifted by Wallen), but also because it signifies how far he has come on his own terms. His career, he says, “bought the freedom to relax a bit” and take care of his mother and brother, both of whom he bought houses for, in addition to his own, and all of which were “less expensive than what I could afford,” he says. He admits he’s only comfortable with his watch collection because he knows “I could turn around and sell them all.”

“When I talk to some of my old friends who make music, they’re like, ‘Man, you’re just looking at it for money and you’re not looking at the soul of it.’ I’m like, ‘That’s not necessarily true.’ And the argument I like to make to people who make super-artsy s–t all the time is, ‘You can make a song that a hundred people love and it means something to, or you can make a song that 20 million people love and it means something to, and when they’re having a bad day, they listen to that song. Neither of those are wrong.’

“The problem for myself, and I think people who in general are competitive, even with themselves, is if I don’t have a No. 1 song in a year, I’m going to feel pretty bad,” he continues. “But now if I don’t have three, I’m going to feel bad. But now, because I’ve had eight in one year, I need at least six a year. I’m cool with that number — for now.” His goal is to eventually have 50 No. 1 hits, which he says feels “doable” — and to make over $150 million from his production and writing work.

Although that sounds ambitious, he’s on his way. Vojtesak is working with Post on his upcoming second country set, which the producer teases has a “more traditional or classic country” sound. “There’s some ’90s vibes, some Toby Keith elements to it.” He’s ­especially proud of one song that modulates five times. “Every time I play it around a bunch of music people, they’re like, ‘Oh, s–t. What the f–k is happening?’ It’s this old Western type of record… I don’t want to speak too soon.”

And while he’s working on a project with his longtime friend and gambling buddy Marshmello (they often hit Las Vegas together), he’s still intent on keeping a tight and intentional workload. About a month ago, he says someone reached out from Ye’s camp asking if he wanted to collaborate again: “I was like, ‘No, I’m all right.’ ”

Though Vojtesak’s priority is to stay locked in with just a few superstars for now, he still has two that he would add to his plate any day: Swift and Ed Sheeran. But he’ll never reach out.

“I don’t try to interject or impose myself with artists necessarily; I don’t want people to do it to me, if I can be on some golden rule bulls–t,” he says. “My lawyer is Billie Eilish’s lawyer. I met her brother. I don’t try to reach out to them. They’re doing fine. And in the same way, I don’t want FINNEAS to come work on Morgan’s album.”

Vojtesak may be proud of his dominating run — in country music, specifically, for now — but his success is the very thing driving him to figure out what’s next. “I don’t really want to be responsible for making everybody sick of country and being like, ‘Wow, it’s oversaturated,’ ” he says. “With a lot of rappers in particular, I’ve had to have that conversation where I’m like, ‘Listen, you’re one of five guys who are all about equal success levels who want to do this right now.’ Just being in this space because it’s hot? It’s cyclical. Rap was hot for a long time. Now it’s this, but I want to make sure that I get to the next thing — and I want to get there preferably before everybody. Which I feel like I’ve done in the past — but now I have to do it again.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.