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Who are the most streamed artists of all-time on Spotify? Where does my favorite artist rank? Check this daily updated ranking and find out.
Most streamed artists on Spotify
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A few words about this ranking
Most listened to artists vs monthly listeners
A lot of publications, including popular ones like the Guinness World Records, confuse the artist with the most monthly listeners at a given point as the most streamed or popular one on Spotify.
The most streamed artists, as the general public understands it, reflects artists with the most total streams in the platform.
The confusion is due to the absence of this statistic among Spotify's own indicators. They communicate on the artist with the most unique monthly listeners, and base their global ranking on it. Ironically, the monthly listeners statistics is largely flawed due to several technical reasons.
Internally, Spotify use a 0-to-100 popularity index based on streams, but only recent ones are considered.
It took until we created this page back in 2020 that the general public started to get a proper view of artists who really amassed the most streams on the platform. This list is still going, getting better and better, with a comprehensive top 1,000 updating every day.
A little bit of history
Not too long ago, in late 2015, EDM star Kygo made headlines by hitting 1 billion streams in a year from his debut, a record at the time. Everything got so much bigger, and now a trio of artists are racing to become the first ever to break 100 billion plays.
For very long, the overall leader was Drake. His streams history reveal that he was the first artist at 30 billion in April 2020, at 40 billion in August 2021, 50 billion by September 2022, 60 billion by June 2023, and 70 billion by December 2023.
These numbers refer to lead streams only, which is also how artists are ranked below. If featurings are considered, Drake passed 50 billion in January 2021 and 75 billion in February 2023.
While the Canadian hip-hop star felt alone in his world for quite some time, he lost his crown on February 23, 2024. The most streamed artist of all-time is now no other than Taylor Swift. She has been flying for years. The day her folklore came out in July 2020, she was up to 11.9 billion streams, a 20+ billion deficit over Drake at 32.1 billion.
In May 9, 2024, she became the first artist ever to hit 80 billion, and then cleared 90 billion by September 15, 2024. It's hard to believe that she was still trailing behind US pop diva Ariana Grande among the most streamed female artists not too long ago.
The overall top 3 is completed by Bad Bunny who leads among Latin acts. Highlighting how strong these two artists are, Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny have been replacing each other as the top daily artist according to the popularity index since February 16, 2022, a stretch of over 900 days.
The most listened to group belongs to South Korean heroes BTS. Among legacy artists, rock legends Queen are kings.
If we look at averages rather than totals, Harry Styles is unbeatable. From his debut album to Harry's House he issued only 36 distinct songs, all of which topped 100 million streams with ease, putting him in the all-time top 40.
Most played artists.... on all platforms?
Many relevant on-demand audio streaming platforms famously hide playcounts data, including Apple Music and Amazon Music.
Thanks to our extensive experience, that led us to thinly estimate Spotify's market share in over 120 countries, and study every platform with more than 100,000 monthly active users, we've set up algorithms who precisely estimate comprehensive on-demand audio streams from all artists based on their personal profile and results.
A unique solution, our empirical approach led our scripts to get near perfect results through countless of cases when compared to certified amounts. Just hit the button below and enjoy this highly valuable data!
Frequently Asked Questions
This ranking presents the top Spotify artists based on streams from tracks available inside their personal page's sections Albums, Singles and Compilations. They are combined together and defined as "Lead streams".
The number of tracks available and over several milestones are based on lead songs only.
Streams achieved thanks to songs listed below the Appears on section on Spotify do not impact the overall ranking and these milestones statistics. They appear in the "Featured streams" column.
The most streamed artist of all-time is American icon Taylor Swift. She leads ahead of Canadian rapper Drake and Latin star Bad Bunny.
The most streamed solo female artist of all-time is Taylor Swift. Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish complete the podium, while Rihanna and Dua Lipa claim the fourth and fifth spot, respectively.
The most streamed group of all-time is BTS. South Korean best selling band leads over Coldplay and Imagine Dragons.
The most played rapper of all-time is the Canadian rapper Drake. The top 5 most listened to rappers is completed in order by Eminem, Kanye West, Travis Scott and Juice WRLD.
The most listened to rock artist of all-time is Queen. The top 5 is completed in order by Linkin Park, Arctic Monkeys, The Beatles, and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The most streamed Asian artist of all-time is South Korean group BTS. A couple of Indian superstars complete the top 3, Arijit Singh and Pritam.
The most streamed Latin artist of all-time is Bad Bunny, ahead of J Balvin and Ozuna.
The most streamed album of all-time is Bad Bunny's Un Verano Sin Ti. Go through the top 5,000 right now.
The most streamed song (all versions) and the most streamed track (with no side version) are both Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, taking the lead over Shape of You by Ed Sheeran.
As the Spotify database is tricky, we can't guarantee you there won't be occasional data glitches, even if we developed several controls to grant data consistency. If an issue appears in spite of these controls, we perform manual fixes.
If the issue persists, reach out to us to tell us about it.
We have more for you
bts is at the 20th spot now with 14.23 Billion streams you need to update it
Hi itszshreya!
BTS are at 21 with 14.14 billion. They add 110 million from features, which aren't factored in for ranking purpose. If we do factor them, then many artists (Juice WRLD, Kendrick Lamar, Daddy Yankee, Bruno Mars, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, Future and more) would jump over BTS to push them at the bottom of the top 30.
Then why don't we add the features stream and then rank according to that because even if they're featured the streams still go to them
Hi!
Featured streams are displayed for information purpose, but lead streams are more reflective of an artist success. 2 Chainz or Quavo move from less than 3 billion to near 10 billion with features for example, and the former number is way more relevant to draw their popularity than the latter.
Which songs are included under featured streams, shouldn't it be more than only 110m streams?
Hi Fghhj!
Featured streams are songs that do not appear inside an artist page's album, single, compilation sections, instead they only pop up under the "Appears on" category.
Hi, suga’s interlude bu halsey feat bts is at +50M and who by lauv feat. BTS is at 93M, waste It on me by steve aoki is at 193M alone so I think It need updating on features, or maybe this are already counted on overall streams?
hola ,una pregunta porque a bad bunny le estan sacando stream a cada rato ,hace unas semanas le sacaron 400 millones y hace 3 dias le sacaron 200 millones mas ,ahora que es el artista que mas stream esta recibiendo veo injusto que le esten sacando a cada rato,a justin bieber le sacaron pero a los dias se los devolvieron ,por favor una respuesta y espero que le devuelvan los stream porque ya habia pasado a post malone all credits
Créeme que no es porque les da la gana de sacarle porque les cae mal, esto se actualiza solo (sistema) y lo que puede estar pasando es que están sacando canciones que no están en su página de Spotify y por lo tanto no cuentan o simplemente hay un error en el sistema.
por favor con todo respeto ,dejen de sacarle streams a bad bunny ,me gustaria que revisaran eso por favor ,tambien entre al perfil de bad bunny y falta la cancion krippy kushs ,esta krippy kush remix pero falta la original que tiene 195.1 millones ,es del album de farruko trapxficante ,podrian revisarlo por favor ,y dejen progresar al artista sin sacarle stream
Please with all due respect, stop streaming bad bunny, I would like you to review that please, also enter the bad bunny profile and the song krippy kushs is missing, this krippy kush remix but the original that has 195.1 million is missing, it is from the album of farruko trapxficante, could you please review it, and let the artist progress without streaming him
estoy siguiendo el dia a dia las actualizaciones ,durante 1 mes siguieron con todo actualizado correctamente y de la nada le sacan 400 millones y mas tarde 200 millones mas ,eso no es un error de sistema ,porque sigue un patron de actualizaciones y que de repente le saquen stream no tiene sentido ,te puedo creer que le saquen por algun error 20 ,40 o hasta 100 millones pero las cifras que te dije ya es mucho ,espero que lo revisen ,porque todas las cuentas informan en base a charmasters y si dan una informacion y a los dias se cambia completamente no tiene sentido ,si le devolvieran lo que le sacaron ya estaria cerca de los 25 billones pero bueno
