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Hi Gary!
The Artist Spotlight: tracking history enables Gold and Platinum users to see how an artist evolved through time, the top 1,000 list isn't available at past dates yet.
Hi guys! Read this message if you want to help us with the accuracy of this list 😉
I've added a couple of admin functionalities to the streaming tool to do data mining.
The first enhancement enables to force the saving of an artist playcount. It's very useful when an artist total is stuck because an inflated total was saved in the past. Forcing it enables to update the artist results, and set up a new, clean comparison point for future days, so that everything keeps updating just fine after that.
The second enables to scan an artist catalog entirely (albums, singles, and all 'appears on' compilations). To improve performances, we exclude many releases when the script detects that they bring in no new streams because the tracks are already available elsewhere. When 2 songs have the exact same playcount in a day, the script can exclude a valid song "forever" yet. The re-scan of the complete catalog fixes this flaw by detecting back the song.
I'm looking for 1-2 chart fans who are willing to spend time fixing the data. That is, updating the totals which are stuck for long and the issues of missing tracks which happen to be mentioned on comments. It only takes to perform a search while checking the checkboxes I added for that matter.
Naturally, these data moderators will be granted a Platinum access on top of the availability of the pair of extra buttons. It's important that the person is interested by all kinds of music, not only female divas, K-Pop groups, Hip-Hop stars or so, and obviously it's also key to be reliable.
If you are interested drop me an email at contact@chartmasters.org so that we can discuss together 🙂
hey MJD i found this Taylor Swift Song on Spotify that doesn't come up when i search her in the Spotify Tool. it'd be great if it's added
https://open.spotify.com/track/0xUHUmWSil967FF5yqDHqi?si=09f586f1fa504a4c
Is there a way to download this list into excel or as a csv file? For use in a programming course.
Hi guys! I just want to comment a few things I noted while I was making a bunch of top 50 playlists of some of the biggest legacy artists on Spotify. I counted all the versions I could find of their biggest songs. I didn’t count features or Christmas songs because I believe those are different beasts. Let’s go!
Madonna surprised me. Most of her top 50 is on par with The Rolling Stones, U2, Elvis and Sinatra. At times, it’s even stronger. The thing that’s underperforming for her is the top. Her biggest hits should be bigger. Like a Prayer is barely above 250m, whereas the other artists I mentioned have each, at least one song above 400m. None of her albums reach 500m and none of her songs make the top 100 of the 80’s. With a push in the forefront she would definitely get there. Although you can still think her entire catalogue is underperforming, considering her popularity and sales, I believe most of her songs are doing as expected.
Sinatra and Elvis don’t need Christmas to do excellent. All the songs in their respective top 50 are above 10m. By far the only artists pre-60’s with such a record.
Elton John depends heavily on his biggest songs since his deep cuts give him close to nothing. Even the ones from his prime. You’re going to find a lot of songs that can’t even hit 1m.
In regards to recent albums (I counted the last 10 years), Michael Jackson’s posthumous XSCAPE is the biggest. Followed by U2’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. They are bigger than the latest efforts by the likes of McCartney, Bowie, Madonna, Bon Jovi and even AC/DC. I swear, I don’t hate the guy, but this is another instance in which Elton John doesn’t have good numbers. “Shut up and play the hits” they say.
Finally, Queen vs The Beatles. By far the most successful legacy artists on Spotify. Both have similar discographies. Queen has 15 studio albums. the Beatles 13. Queen has a lot of live versions and The Beatles have a lot of studio sessions.
That said, Freddie and company have 2.4b streams more than the Fab Four. But that doesn’t mean The Beatles are doing “worse” (Worse being obviously a relative term in this context). I have a few points:
- Despite having 11m more monthly listeners and 16m more followers, Queen’s advantage over The Beatles on daily streams is nowhere as big as one would expect by looking at those numbers. They're outpacing them daily by a 1m or less. What this means is that more people listen to Queen, but they tend to listen to the same songs, while the ones listening to The Beatles go beyond their most popular.
- Since Chartmasters published the article "Spotify all-time most streamed artists" on Decemeber 30, 2019. Queen has gained 4.74b and The Beatles 4.41b. Almost on par. The Bohemian Rhapsody (movie) effect has slowed down.
- I hope this make sense to you. Bohemian Rhapsody, Don’t Stop Me Now, Another One Bites the Dust, Under Pressure, We Will Rock You, I Want to Break Free and Somebody to Love amount for more than 50% of Queen’s total streams. Most artists need less than 10 songs to reach their top 50%. The Beatles need 25 songs (from Here Comes the Sun to Can’t Buy Me Love) to reach theirs. I think this is a sign of an incredibly strong catalogue. I believe only Drake has a more balanced discography than them (32 songs for his 50%, not counting features).
- Right now, The Beatles have 30 tracks with more than 100m. Queen has 22 (23 counting Thank God It’s Christmas). That difference will keep increasing. Within the 75m-99m range, The Beatles have 12, Queen just 2.
As I said before, while talking about these two bands, concepts like “not as big” are relative. For God’s sake they have more 1b songs than Kanye, Coldplay, Eminem, BTS and Beyoncé. Any artist would kill to have written their legendary songs and to achieve the level of popularity they have now, 31 years after their front man (the best ever) died.
I think it will take a long time before The Beatles overtake Queen on total streams, if ever. Those songs are just so damn big. But The Beatles have some of the most impressive statistics on Spotify. They remain as popular as ever. Also, consider the fact that they broke up half a century ago.
- TL;DR: Queen has the biggest hits. The Beatles have the most hits.
Maybe all of this is nonsense to some of you, but I wanted to share it.
As always, thank you Chartmasters for providing us with these amazing tools.
Take say, Telephone by Lady Gaga featuring Beyonce. Gaga is the lead artist, Beyonce is the featured artist.
Gaga get's the tracks streams in her lead column, Beyonce gets the tracks streams in her featured column.
Wow, Queen and The Beatles figures always impress me, MJ too. Decades after their peak, they still have a popularity that can challenge 21st century greats like Eminem, the monster sellers of today like BTS, and a spent force like Beyonce. Wow!
Great post Baraka92!
It's funny to see that many of the observations you have while looking at streaming stats, I've had the same 15 years ago when digging into album sales! I was always amazed at how poorly Elton John catalog studio albums used to sell for example.
The only point where historically the reality differs is Queen + Beatles being by far the most successful legacy artists. Both had successful movies related to them recently. An important point is that the Beatles also have a lot of very short songs. In the other side, Jackson has been facing dreadful publicity / a lot of blacklists lately, and his own 'This Is' playlists are filled with Jackson 5 / Jacksons stuff that we tend to seperate from his numbers when comparing to Queen & the Beatles.
I mention this because when I used to collect streaming stats manually from 2014 to about 2016, Jackson was indeed easily the biggest legacy artist, about 20% ahead of Queen. They both had a very similar top 6, but after that at each position on their personal rankings the gap was increasingly big in Jackson's favor. His 20th biggest song was twice as big as Queen's 20th. This doesn't factor in that on YouTube as well as on Asian platforms Jackson is even bigger in comparison to Queen / The Beatles.
I've been studying the music industry for enough years to know that there are circles, the popularity of an artist is a sinusoid line. By 2014, Jackson was in a positive period for him, Queen not so much. Now it's the opposite. I'm still unclear to be honest on who's the biggest organic streaming artists of the 3, by that I mean who would end up ahead in a span large enough to encapsulate a good & a bad era for each of them.
What's safe to say is that no other artist can challege them, at least not until we consider Eminem a legacy artist.
Wow- thanks for that. Much appreciated. Also Freddie died on 24 November 1991, 30 years ago. I am a huge Beatles fan but for sure, do admire Queen , so many good songs.
Thank you for that.
Carmen
