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[UPDATE] The most streamed artists list is now updated automatically at this link.
If you visit us, you surely saw a lot of news in recent years stating streaming records. What's unlikely is that you ever saw a comprehensive list of Spotify most streamed artists, with numbers for all those who belong to the all-time top 200.
Thanks to our Spotify numbers tool, it's now possible to retrieve an enormous quantity of data very efficiently. So, who are the most streamed male, female, bands, legacy artists on the platform?
Most streamed male artists
The top 4 most streamed artists ever on Spotify happen to be all-male, with the top 2 bringing close to no surprise at all.
Drake leads the way followed by Ed Sheeran. The massive gaps between positions 1-2-3 confirm how dominant they both are.
There is more distance between Drake and Post Malone than between Post Malone and the #70 most streamed artist ever.
This being said, Post Malone has been catapulting from 0 stream not that long ago to #3 and continues to be the fastest raising artist at the moment with a 2.4 billion boom in the last 3 months. How high can he climb?
Eminem continues to hold strong in spite of lacking cross over hits since streaming became a thing. In fact, 9 of his top 10 songs have been released between 2000 and 2013.
Although he has been discreet in recent years, Justin Bieber registers a very healthy #5 ranking. The anticipation is huge for his comeback next week so expect his numbers to climb even faster from now on.
Kanye West, The Weeknd, Calvin Harris, XXXTentacion and Khalid complete the Top 10. This latter replaces Kendrick Lamar who drops from #9 to #12 since last quarter's update.
They all crack 11 billion, same as Ozuna, with this one being the top non-English artist of the platform.
Another crowded block of artists top 10 billion. They are the fast rising Shawn Mendes, Latin superstars Bad Bunny and J Balvin plus hyped US rapper Travis Scott.
Shawn Mendes will soon break this incredible milestone as well.
Lower down we can highlight Michael Jackson, far and away the most streamed solo legacy artist with over 6 billion streams combined for songs of his page, which do include hits with his brothers that belong to his greatest hits packages.
Most streamed female artists
Since Spotify doesn't retrieve featured songs which are only present the "Appears on" section through its API, Ariana Grande takes over Rihanna as the most streamed female artist of the platform.
The former is also gaining streams more than 2 times faster than the latter (1.28b against 579m in a quarter) so the near 4-billion gap should grow even more unless the Barbadian singer returns at last.
They are the only two females with more than 10 billion streams as well as the only two to belong to the overall top 10.
With features, Rihanna booms to 18,117,844,175 against 17,562,196,454 for Ariana Grande, so here too the youngest of the two can claim the top soon.
Taylor Swift retains the 3rd spot as she is also the 3rd fastest growing artist of the list at the moment with a 1.22b bump since the last update. She will soon eclipse the 10 billion barrier.
The one racing the hardest right now is the biggest female artist of the year, Billie Eilish. She adds 1.63b streams in 3 months to climb from #9 to #4 with a nearly 9 billion total. Can she challenge Taylor Swift or even Rihanna in the long run?
Beyonce saw multiple of her songs with husband Jay-Z return to Spotify, which, added to recurrent streams, conclude on a 1.18b jump, providing her the last spot inside the Top 5.
Sia and Nicki Minaj are over 8 billion streams a piece although they are climbing at a more modest pace lately.
Aiming to catch them are Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga, this one joining the top 10 this quarter.
To do so, she moved ahead of Adele who has the least effective catalog of the top 14 these days.
There is a few legacy artist at the bottom of the list with both Mariah Carey and Madonna charted, at 34 and 40, respectively.
At 35 with over 3 billion streams, Anitta is the best performing Brazilian artists and the second best non-English and non-Spanish singing act.
Most streamed bands / groups artists
The highly valuable catalog of Coldplay along with hit singles a few years ago give them the first position among bands.
Their last album is bombing though so rather than extending their lead, they are stable against runner ups and growing at a lower pace than bands at 3-5.
They are over 12 billion still, just like Imagine Dragons who are a solid second.
Maroon 5 is closing in thanks to hit single Memories, just like DJs the Chainsmokers who are the only band jumping by more than a billion since the last udpate.
With almost each of the top 4 pacing faster than the one ahead, how this list will look like in a 1-year time is anyone's guess.
Legendary band Queen score a stunning number 5 position with nearly 9 billion streams. The Bohemian Rhapsody biopic did wonders for a catalog that was already very impressive.
Twenty One Pilots haven't done as well with their last album but they are still strong enough to be at 6 with 8.2 billion streams.
At current rate they will be topped by Korean flagship BTS quite soon. At 7.8 billion, the 7-members group already moved past One Direction to become the biggest boys band of the list.
Linkin Park and OneRepublic complete the top 10 thanks to large catalogs of hits. The latter should be pushed out of the top 10 soon by no other than the Beatles.
There are 2 all-female groups charted, Little Mix at 21 and Fifth Harmony at 28.
Most streamed legacy artists
It's difficult to put more legends on a list than this one. Top legacy artists are led by a trio of outstanding performers, Queen, the Beatles and Michael Jackson.
In volume, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are close behind although they registered new hits recently. Their pure back catalog is still incredibly impressive.
Outside of the big 4, Metallica leads the pack followed by absolute icons like Bob Marley, Green Day, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones.
One has to get a priceless catalog to hit 3 billion streams with old songs only, apart from the top 10 four more artists do it, namely Nirvana, Guns N' Roses, 2Pac, and David Bowie.
At 16 is Luis Miguel, far and away the biggest non-English speaking artist of the list.
The impact of female singers is minimal with none of them inside the top 15. Mariah Carey and Madonna are #17 and #30, respectively, with the former enjoying the most favorable time of the year to rank high.
Among pre-rock era artists Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash impress with 2.4-2.8 billion streams each. They all manage to land into the top 30.
Most streamed artists overall
As I know that a lot of you love raw numbers, here is the full list of the 277 artists with over 2 billion streams to date. No comment, only data.
Records related to songs
Most 100 million plus songs
Even with the recent growth of Spotify, hitting 100 million streams with one track only is still a notesworthy achievement.
To get there, you need either a decent new hit or a catalog smash that faced the test of time quite well.
Imagine doing it with 73 tracks! Drake is way over anyone else in this indicator, showing that his catalog doesn't rely on a few songs only. Instead, listeners play his albums in full an extensive number of times.
Ed Sheeran is stunning too. With a discography made of 4 albums only, one of which is very recent, he already registers 44 tracks at over 100 million. This includes the entire ÷ album.
Eminem stands at 41. The wild thing is that 28 of these tracks are deep catalog hits. It shows the insane lasting appeal of his songs.
A lot of artists have from 20 to 38 tracks at 100 million or more, they are mostly artists with 8+ billion catalogs.
New to this list are BTS with 20 songs in 9 digits. This illustrates they do have proper hits on top of extensive fans' following.
The bar is set too high to see legacy artists, with Michael Jackson coming the closest at 17. Queen stand at 15 while nobody else has more than 10.
Most 10 million plus songs
When we have a look at artists with the most tracks over 10 million, we can see a mix of old and new acts, as well as a mix of widely popular artists and others more fanbase-driven.
Drake and Eminem are quite close at 176 and 172, respectively.
Kanye West completes the top 3 while Future is a surprising 4th at 155. His incredible productivity is highlighted with this statistic. In a similar way, Chris Brown comes next.
This quintet of US urban artists shows how this country still consumes albums as a whole even with the streaming format.
Speaking about old and new, the first non-urban, non-solo artists come close at 6/7, they are the Beatles and Coldplay. Liverpool legends are unbeatable in terms of raw volume of popular tracks among legacy artists.
Ed Sheeran still scores 129 tracks at this level in spite of his short discography. His popularity is so high that he can repeatedly break these threshold with multiple versions of the same song.
Two popular artists with a strong fanbase close the top 10. Taylor Swift has 120 tracks in 8 digits, BTS have 119.
Most 1 million plus songs
The list of artists with the most tracks over 1 million is supposed to be legends' territory. Most recent artists simply do not have enough material to compete.
Queen lead the way with an immense 360 tracks. It's 30 albums with 12 tracks each. They achieve this score thanks to a large catalog but also countless and highly praised live versions of their songs.
An absolute shocker comes at 2. French rapper Jul, who first entered national charts in 2014 in this Deezer-dominated market, registers 359 songs over 1 million streams on Spotify.
This madness is even more incredible since he has close to zero credibility inside the rap community. His peculiar career who sees him drop from 2 to 4 new albums every year is giving him outstanding results.
The Beatles and Bob Marley are close at 3 and 4, with 340 and 314, respectively.
The rock legend Bruce Springsteen follows them with 294.
From 247 to 274 we face more classic acts like the Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, David Bowie and Michael Jackson, and more recent rock bands Green Day and Linkin Park.
Inside the same ballpark there is also productive younger artists like Future and Chris Brown.
Two more surprises pop up lower down.
One of them is once again Luis Miguel. The Mexican superstar has 251 tracks which reach this threshold, an immense performance for a legacy Latin artist.
The last one is the German rapper Kollegah who appears with 252 tracks. He is another youngster who perfectly uses the new market environment to build impressive numbers.
Source: Spotify
Do you Think Michael will soon be able to surpass the Beatles? Especially after Halloween with Thriller's increase.. Do you Think It's possible?
Eminem is the most impressive on this list to me. The fact that he's up there with (or well ahead of) hot new artists from the last decade is just crazy.
And then of course there's Queen killing it.
The Bohemian Rhapsody movie has pushed Queen up to the Michael Jackson/Beatles league where they deserve to be, finally, and it looks like the impact of the film is having a lasting effect judging by their daily streams.
Wow. Cant believe Luis Miguel is that big. Maybe u guys should his career study. 😅
Hey when I looked up Beyoncé’s total streams with your Spotify calculator it said 8.27B and 7.6B with just albums. But Nicki with just albums is at 5B and in total she’s listed at 8B. Why is her total included by not Beyoncé’s?
Great to see Queen above the Beatles, a lot more people now realising how great Queen are globally.
The film yesterday hasn't had anywhere near the impact Bohemian Rhapsody has had. Seems like younger people generally like Queen music more than the Beatles.
At the moment.........but next generation might gravitate towards Beatles................or an entirely different artist. It is very interesting to see
Just no. Queen never were and never will be on par with MJ and Beatles. They are at maximum on par with Madonna and Rolling Stones.
I have to disagree with you on that, they're already over both the Stones and Madonna and the gap between them is only getting bigger and they're doing as well as Beatles and Elvis combined on streaming. And they definitely seem on par with them in album sales as well at the moment.
Sadly no, they don't show their numbers. But Drake being #1 there is quite certain. He was the first (and likely only so far) to surpass 10 billion streams there last year.
What a fantastic analysis, thank you very much for this and the Spotify numbers tool which made it possible!
Two suggestions : 1. Do you think it might be possible to have something like that for Apple Music? I realize they don't actually publish any numbers but even a Kworb-like estimate would be great to have.
2. Would you ever consider updating the Spotify numbers tool so it also shows the number of unique listeners for a specific artist? The app shows it, of course, but it'd be so much easier to have these numbers in the same format as the number of streams.
Thanks in advance!
I would like to point out that the Spotify ratio for calculating streaming units actually hurts an artist like Drake. Apple Music is a much higher ratio of his streams than the formula suggests, and this is similar with most Hip-Hop artists who stream well in US.
For example, https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/the-real-story-of-drake-spotify-apple-music-and-the-record-breaking-streams-of-scorpion/
Scorpion got 401 million Apple Music US streams first week, while getting only 321 million Spotify US streams first week.
Your formula would take his 321 million Spotify US first week streams, and convert them to only 505 million total streams first week. When in reality he got over 721 million, not even including Tidal/Google Play/etc.
It's important to note because Apple Music in general is gaining a huge market share of US audio streams, so the formula more and more underestimates US audio streams.
Hi Soky!
Well, not in a near future at all. In the whole vacuum of things a temporary boost for 1 song out of such monster catalogs is irrelevant. At the moment, the Beatles are pacing much faster. They have the 50th Anniversary of Abbey Road out, they have always positive press / radio airplay. Michael Jackson has highly limited radio airplay now and nothing to back him up. Since the article was posted, the Beatles added 42 million streams, Jackson 21 million.
They came on Spotify later than Michael Jackson, they have virtually been pacing always faster since they joined. The main issue isn't even radio airplay, new releases or Halloween. The big element which gives them the edge is the music length. Their songs are fairly shorter than Jackson's songs. If you stream One for 30 minutes, you give them 13 streams, if you stream Number Ones for 30 minutes, you give him 7 streams, and that's actually the compilation which includes all the radio edits to make his songs shorter!
Hi Lola!
At times the call to the API faces issues and doesn't retrieve 100% of the discography. It looks like this happened for Beyoncé, thanks for spotting it, that way we will be able to know where all artists stand in the future and get all values correct!
Well... The Beatles have been on Spotify for way less time than Queen (since Christmas 2015). Yet, they are already in the top 50 most streamed artists there.
I think The Beatles were gaining the same amount or slightly more than Queen since they came on Spotify but Queen have probably been in the lead before the Beatles' streaming arrival and after Bohemian Rhapsody hit cinemas. Only time will tell if they will hit the top spot again but a part of me kind of doubt it.
Hi Rod!
To be honest this argument is fairly flawed. Cumulative streams from the platform pre-Xmas 2015 are ridiculous in volume in comparison to cumulative streams since this period. On top of that, their arrival was so much hyped that in 2/3 months they made up for most of what was organically lost in previous months.
To give you a concrete example, Queen had 'only' 595 million streams cumulatively by April 2015 and that was already well enough to be the biggest legacy group by then!
Hi Eric!
Since your comment required more extensive explanations I went on to write this article 🙂
