Bad Bunny started making his own music as a teenager and began posting tracks online around 2013–2014, but he really started his professional music career in 2016 when his song “Diles” blew up on SoundCloud and got him signed to the label Hear This Music.

Quick Scoop: When he started

  • As a teen, he was already writing and recording songs at home, experimenting with Latin trap and reggaeton on simple equipment.
  • Around 2013–2014, he was uploading his early tracks to SoundCloud under the name Bad Bunny.
  • In 2016, his track “Diles” went viral on SoundCloud, caught the attention of DJ Luian, and led to his first professional contract with Hear This Music while he was still working at a supermarket and studying in college.
  • That same year he dropped “Soy Peor,” which turned him from a local buzz artist into a rising star in Latin trap.

How his rise unfolded

  • 2016 is usually seen as the year he officially “started” in the industry, because that’s when the business side (label, management, pro releases) really kicked in.
  • Before that, his “start” was more underground: recording in his room, uploading to SoundCloud, and slowly building a small online audience.
  • After 2016, the momentum snowballed with singles like “Sensualidad,” “I Like It,” and “Mía,” leading into his debut album X 100PRE in 2018 and fully cementing him as a global star.

Forum-style take: what fans usually say

If you read fan threads or timelines, you’ll see two common answers to “when did Bad Bunny start making music?”:

  1. “Since he was a kid/teen, recording at home and putting songs on SoundCloud.”
  2. “Officially in 2016, when ‘Diles’ hit and he got signed.”

Both are true—one is about his creative beginnings, the other about his professional career.

TL;DR:
He’s been making music since his teens, uploading tracks online by the early 2010s, but his professional music career really starts in 2016 with “Diles” and his first label deal.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.