Streaming Masters – Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift moved from a rising country music star to a global hit maker. Her impressive album sales have been praised since day one.
In the last 2 years, the icon released as many as 5 albums, folklore, evermore, the newly recorded versions of Fearless and Red, plus her new super smash Midnights.
With her powerful catalog and a busy new release schedule, how high are her streams through audio and video platforms?
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Taylor Swift streaming review – the method
Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube.
To factor in the growing impact of multiple Asian countries where these platforms aren’t always the go-to site for music streaming, more sources have been added.
In order to account for their real popularity in each relevant country, the below sources have been used along with the mentioned ratios that reflect the market share of each area.
Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 100 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * Spotify market shares based on artists’ market distribution
Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms
*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.
Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * ArtistRatio + Genie * 2.20 + AWA * 100 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750
Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, he is rewarded with 100% of these units, while featured acts share among them a 50% piece of the totals.
Taylor Swift streaming review – the results
Total: 46,503,915 EAS
Taylor Swift most streamed tracks (EAS)
1. Blank Space [1989] – 1,706,000
2. I Don’t Wanna Live Forever [Orphan] – 1,678,000
3. Shake It Off [1989] – 1,610,000
4. Love Story [Fearless] – 1,528,000
5. Look What You Made Me Do [Reputation] – 1,185,000
6. Wildest Dreams [1989] – 1,177,000
7. You Belong with Me [Fearless] – 1,091,000
8. Lover [Lover] – 1,074,000
9. I Knew You Were Trouble [Red] – 1,060,000
10. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together [Red] – 980,000
11. All Too Well [Red] – 929,000
12. Me! [Lover] – 904,000
13. You Need to Calm Down [Lover] – 846,000
14. Delicate [Reputation] – 844,000
15. Bad Blood [1989] – 792,000
16. Style [1989] – 682,000
17. Willow [Evermore] – 629,000
18. Cardigan [Folklore] – 623,000
19. …Ready for It? [Reputation] – 582,000
20. 22 [Red] – 561,000
Sources: Spotify, YouTube, AWA (app), QQ, Genie, Anghami, Audiomack, Boomplay.
You may be interested in…
… Taylor Swift‘s full CSPC analysis
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What is that means ” ArtistRatio ” for Spotify in your formula ? For other artist it is 649/406 . And for Taylor … ?
Hi Denysanatol!
I was expecting people to notice it way earlier 🙂
It’s a new method that we are introducing, which extrapolates artists’ top 50 cities and profile according to Spotify market share in each country, so that it gets much more reflective comprehensive streams. We implemented it already inside the streaming tool, where the EAS column is artist-specific based on this algorythm. I haven’t communicate on it so far since I was waiting for results / see if everything was going fine technically before rolling it out completely, that will be done soon!
So it has yet to be rolled out for other artists?
Good idea ! Some artists more popular on Spotify than on other platforms .
Red’s streams increased so much since the last update wow
excited for the full article!
we all are perched
Yeah, should be a massive increase
I’m afraid not. Her automatic streaming update was 3 million higher than this.
But that is beacuse this numbers are only YouTube and Spotify, i guess.
Happy 3b to 1989! Also, can you please update this article? It might take alot of time to update it though. All I know is that she has received a huge amount of Spotify streams after this article.
they’re gonna update it once they update her CSPC analysis which won’t be that far away in the future since her re-recordings (and normal discography) are adding big amounts of Pure Sales, just be patient while they’re analysing new artists.
Hello, Chartmasters! Can I ask how did you decide to equate 11,750 youtube views to one album unit? Isn’t the target number of views to be considered as equivalent to a one album unit too low?
I realised the number of views neeeded to become an album equivalent unit is just fair and reasonable.
btw, the Song september is only available on spotify, the streams from other audio platforms should be 0
why did her streaming numbers go down?
she’s at 23.8m in the all time sellers table but only 23.2m here
the algorithm that was estimating her non spotify streams was over estimating them i guess
especially that her two latest albums were weak on youtube
That’s the correct interpretation L145! We also switched from Xiami to QQ, possibly she lost a bit there although to be honest I haven’t compare with the previous numbers!
i think the algorithm should be adjusted… i did my own estimations and Ariana Grande’s Streams EAS should be around 31.5m while it’s 32.8m in the top artists list
Hi! could I get the data in an excel format? I wanna use it for a personal project.
Is there any data regarding total audio streams of a song in an especific country? Like total audio streams of YNTCD or any other song in the US?
Sadly not for the US, but you can get a breakdown of it’s Spotify streams to some extent here: https://kworb.net/spotify/track/29fRTIKsJhLUJoldM89GZS.html
You can get some specific data for Japan, South Korea and China though:
– South Korea : Genie streams * 3.05 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan : AWA streams * 100/5.5 (AWA has 5.5% of the Japanese streaming market)
– China* : Xiami streams * 125/6.5 (Xiami has just over 5% of the Chinese streaming market)
The Cover of “September” is only for Spotify, In “Comprehensive Audio Stream” Have 0, Not 47 Millions.
Hi Jose!
Good spotting, the comprehensive figure is automatically calculated on our sheets and we missed that this song is a Spotify-only track!
The “Comprehensive Audio Stream” incluides Spotify??
Why songs like “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home” / “Better Man” are here and “This is What You Came For” is not? Even covers counts for EAS…
Hi TVL20!
We count every song on audio streaming apps, plus videos with 100k+ views on YouTube, the cover of This Is What You Came For doesn’t meet these criterias. We need to consider that even 100k views on YouTube represents a mere 9 EAS units, a number that falls under rounded totals, while it would take an awful lot of time to go through every minor video on YouTube!
Taylor never sang YWAFYWBH, I don’t understand why it’s here while TIWYCF with her vocals and songwriting credit, it’s not. Both should be here or neither of them.
Hi TVL20!
You are correct, it’s simply an error to have YWAFYWBH here. It’s listed on her discography page on Wikipedia, it’s always tricky to deal with these deep cuts since as you can guess we can’t take the time to listen to the 100-300 songs of every artist to know exactly what it is about. Most of the time tracks listed under an artist page are his songs, but Taylor also wrote for others hence the mistake!