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There are countless of statistics online reflecting how much followed artists are, most notably through social media apps and sites.
In truth, how many followers they may have on Instagram or X isn't directly reflective about how successful they are as music artists, as they can be more entertaining or simply more active online than others.
Most followed artists - Full list
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Most followed artists - How it works
Our most followed artists is updated daily, just like the statistic is on Spotify.
To build this list, we automatically retrieve the information for more than 12,000 major artists. We will be adding newly increasing stars to make sure we remain comprehensive.
Having a lot of followers doesn’t guarantee your releases will always be hits. If you've got 20, 30, 50 million subscribers though, it’s safe to say you’ll remain relevant for many years.
So, whether it comes from new songs or past hits, these most followed artists are the ones which are building the most robust discographies, ultimately climbing up the ladder in our CSPC rankings.
Why followers on Digital Streaming Platforms matter
It's all about the music
Instead of social media following, what's really key when gauging the success of a music artist is how many followers they claim inside the music streaming software, with the biggest one being Spotify by some distance.
There, there are no talks or postings from artists. Users follow them mostly because they want to be notified when new music comes out, to represent themselves as fans or to access the artist library more handily.
In all of these cases the conclusion is the same, users following an artist inside a streaming platform is way more likely to consume his music.
The predictive strength of followers
No matter if you are the artist himself, his manager, a label executive or a fan, and even if you are perfectly aware of streaming numbers of the said artist, tracking his followers should still be essential to you.
This is due to the predictive strength of followers, which tells you how many streams an artist is going to have in the future rather than in the past.
In fact, a user hitting the follow button now is telling that he has an active interest in him, that he will engage with his catalog from now on. Data also show that followers will consume music from an artist not just right now, but in the long run.
For popular artists, having a followers count which grows fast means that your upcoming catalog sales are going to be great. In the other side, if hardly anyone new follows an artist, his songs may be on their way to be forgotten.
Followers statistics are just as eye-opening for new artists. If two unknown artists go viral at the same time, check out how many Spotify followers they gain daily to know which one is the most likely to build a career from that point, rather than remaining a one-hit wonder.
How to read the most followed artists list
Here you will find our up to date list of most followed artists on Spotify, a piece of information on how your favorite artist is building momentum in the music industry.
Keep in mind that statistics reflect cumulative followers to date of all artists. It's also worth noting that Spotify periodically removes churned users from followers counts to keep the data as relevant as it gets. They last did it on October 20, 2023, when Ed Sheeran lost a whopping 1,086,171 followers.
We highly recommend you to use the sorting option to display the highest gainers both daily and weekly. This will tell you just as much if not more than the raw value of total followers to date.
If this virality of artists who are truly growing right now, rather than just a song, is of interest to you, you may as well browse our Viral artists ranking which highlights the biggest risers at the moment.
Most-followers artists' record holders
As shocking as this can be for westerners, the current #1 singer on Spotify is Indian Bollywood music king Arijit Singh. While Indian artists have a favorable context in this list, as many users tend to use the free tier for 3 months and then create a new account, this lead over gloabl stars is still mind-blogging.
Just like him, American pop icon Taylor Swift has been increasing super fast lately, comfortably claiming the runner up spot, which makes her the highest ranked female star.
Former #1 Ed Sheeran continues to lose steam, but he is still inside the top 3 with heavy numbers. He previously made headlines in July 2022 when he became the first artist to hit 100 million followers, and led the list for many years.
Another former leader is Rihanna, who turned the first artist to reach 10 million in April 2017. Sheeran took over the top after the monster smash of his Divide album that year. Despite her scarce output over the last decade, the Barbadian icon remains just outside the top 10.
Ariana Grande also used to lead, but among female artists. Now topped by the aforementioned Taylor Swift and the impressive Billie Eilish, far and away the youngest in the top tier of the list, Grande continues to shine at 5 overall. This top 5 are all over 100 million followers.
The battle is on for the top rapper ranking too, with both Drake and Eminem making the top 10, while Latin king Bad Bunny stands at 9.
