Eminem joins the elite club of 10 billionaire songs artists

Having broken over the main audience 15 years before streaming was even a thing, Eminem continues to be a force to be reckoned with. 2013’s smash The Monster moves past a billion streams on Spotify, meaning that his entire top 10 is now over this mark.

Artists with the most songs above 1 billion streams

It took until the end of 2016 to see the first song cracking that historical milestone – Drake‘s One Dance was the first billionaire song, undoubdtedly helped by its absence on YouTube at the time.

While the amount of songs above the billion streams on Spotify increase significantly in recent years, it’s still a noteworthy achievement for any recording. As Eminem completes his perfect 10, with lead songs only, 11 artists are now part of this elite group. We review them.

When several artists share the same number of songs over a billion, the tie-breaker is the date of the last song turning billionaire: the earliest an artist made it, the highest ranked he is.

11 – Eminem – 10 songs

From Lose Yourself to The Monster, Eminem has a stacked top 10, full of classic songs. No less than 9 of these were released in 2013 or earlier. The lone exception is Godzilla, the only track released during the streaming era.

The fact that a song from his last 2020s album Music to Be Murdered By makes the cut reflects that Eminem is still very capable of scoring big hits. And the presence of 9 legacy songs shows how immensely valuable his catalog is.

This is what makes his presence on this listing all the more impressive. Indeed, the US rapper happens to be the only artist to break over the main audience before 2000 to be there.

Lose Yourself and Without Me are over 20 years old, yet both stand over 2 billion, with Till I Collapse poised to reach them at some point during Q3 2024. Hard to believe all these golden songs came out within 5 months. What a moment this was for the artist!

It’s worth noting that both The Real Slim Shady and Mockingbird are currently recording over a million streams per day, again fantastic numbers. Love the Way You Lie is almost there too.

Eminem is looking to push his tally of billionaire songs with Not Afraid by mid-May 2024, while Akon‘s Smack That is also bubbling under, although this ranking focuses on lead songs only.

All screenshots used in this article have been made with ChartMasters’ streaming tool.

10 – Maroon 5 – 10 songs

Tied with Eminem at 10 lead songs over a billion, Maroon 5 rank one stop higher as they got into this club earlier. To be exact, on March 5, 2024 when 2002 classic This Love jumped over the mark.

The Californian pop band actually debuted way back in 1995 with a punkier sound as Kara’s Flowers. They took until their 3rd album and a renaming as Maroon 5 to get noticed. 2002’s Songs About Jane was a slow burner itself, peaking 2 years after its release, but ended up being a monster.

They were in a roll during the 2010s, posting huge smashes starting in 2011 with Moves Like Jagger. 2012’s Payphone, 2014’s Sugar, Maps and Animals, 2017’s What Lovers Do, 2018’s Girls Like You and 2019’s Memories are all comfortably past a billion. The latter will reach 2 billion by next month.

Don’t Wanna Know, from 2016, will still need a full year to become their 11th billionaire song.

9 – Imagine Dragons – 10 songs

The initial failure of Smoke + Mirrors in 2015 made it look like Imagine Dragons were going to be a one-album wonder. Somehow, Evolve managed to be a great comeback, but even pulled monster smashes on its own.

Believe and Thunder combine for 5.2 billion streams, with Whatever It Takes at 1.2 billion. Both Origins and Mercury – Acts 1 & 2 got a couple of billionaires as well. From the former, Bad Liar brought the band their 10th song at over a billion on February 15, 2024.

Of course, singles from Night Visions remain huge on their own. Demons has the highest daily streams, with Radioactive closing in on 2 billion.

8 – Taylor Swift – 11 songs

Up to 18 months ago, the amount of songs above a billion was one of the rare statistics where Taylor Swift was laying behind other top artists. In fact, by November 2022, only I Don’t Wanna Live Forever had gotten there, for quite some time.

At that point, Blank Space joined it, and the unprecedented streaming success of Taylor Swift since then completely changed the picture. She now claims 11 songs at 1 billion or more, the last one being august on March 15, 2024.

Songs from 1989 (3), reputation (2), Lover (2), and folklore (2) recently broke over the milestone, despite being 4 to 10 years old each. Recent songs perform amazingly too, with Anti-Hero close to 1.5 billion.

The biggest recent hit is still an old one, as evergreen viral track Cruel Summer is up to almost 2 billion.

Naturally, this tally of 11 billionaire songs isn’t a final one. There are 3 more songs over 900 million, with great daily streams too. Speaking about these, Taylor Swift owns no less than 40 songs with 500,000 daily streams or more, so sky is the limit for the number of songs that she can bring to this billion level. Then, her new studio album The Tortured Poets Department is coming out next week.

7 – Justin Bieber – 11 songs

Justin Bieber was one of the first artist to pill billionaire songs as if this was an easy feat. His 2015 album Purpose was a phenomenal performer on streaming. It still is, with its 4 main songs over a billion, including Love Yourself and Sorry at 2b+.

From the album Justice, both Peaches and Ghost made the trick as well, on top of Changes‘ Intentions. On the list, we can see as many as 16 songs with over a billion streams, while I named only 7.

A quartet of duets topped a billion too. These are STAY, at a gigantic 3 billion, I Don’t Care, Stuck with U, and 10,000 Hours, the last to join the group on December 13, 2023.

7 + 4 = 11. What about the remaining 5 songs? They are all features, Let Me Love You, Despacito (Remix), Cold Water, and I’m the One. I’m not citing Bad Guy – it is erroneously credited to Justin Bieber by Spotify. The playcount displayed here corresponds to Billie Eilish‘ main version. The remix which features Justin Bieber recorded 369,234,806 by itself.

To improve his total to 12 leading songs over a billion, the best (and only so far) contender is his breakthrough hit Baby, now at 907 million.

6 – The Weeknd – 11 songs

The Weeknd‘s ability to score bigger than earth hits is quite unique – well, almost unique, as we will see later on. He is the only artist with a track over 4 billion. He is also the only one with 2 songs over 3 billion. And his 4 lead songs at 2 billion is a tied record.

What’s even more insane is that Save Your Tears has not 1 but 2 versions with monster numbers, totalling 3.4 billion. It’s not his only song with a massive Ariana Grande version, as Die For You shoots from 2.16 billion to over 3 billion with its remix.

Just like for Taylor Swift, it feels like any of his old song is capable of blowing out at any moment. For example, Starboy, already a big hit in 2016, added over a billion new streams since the start of 2013. So did Die For You, and without the remix, while it took 6 years to reach its first billion.

Blinding Lights‘ release was already five years ago, but the song never died and continues to record 1.7 million streams daily. The Hills, Call Out My Name, and Creepin’ also top a million. This is his last billionaire, reaching this level on October 11, 2023.

Poised to join the big ones is Stargirl Interlude, expected to hit a billion by the end of the month. The track, issued in late 2016, was up to 188 million streams by mid-2022, then exploded and continues to accelerate. The whole Starboy album is performing ridiculously well, with also Reminder on its way to a billion. At the bottom of the top 20 most streamed albums ever not too long ago, Starboy is now ranked 3rd.

With 8 songs from 905 million to 975 million, The Weeknd will undoubtedly climb up the latter very fast over the next months. The whole list makes it feel like it’s easy to record a million streams per day. To put things into perspective, the cut to enter the global top 200 tracks is at 1.16 million today. The Canadian pop / R&B star is simply extremely big.

5 – Drake – 11 songs

Unlike The Weeknd, fellow Canadian superstar Drake isn’t into one of these buzz moments where records are broken every day. Out of 21 songs with over 900 million streams, only 6 are over half a million streams.

Except One Dance, God’s Plan and Passionfruit, his catalog isn’t as buoyant nowadays as it used to be. But his recent material is still performing well. While it’s true that none of his songs issued from his last 4 albums (from Certified Lover Boy to For All the Dogs), several will get there with time. Jimmy Cooks is getting close, Fair Trade and Rich Flex will follow later on.

Without recent hits over a billion and relatively low recurrent streams, having 11 lead songs plus 4 features over one billion streams is outstanding. It highlights Drake‘s unmatched popularity in the late 2010s. Views (3) and Scorpion (4) alone combine for 7 billionaire songs. His most recent lead song to hit a billion is Too Good, it did so on October 24, 2023.

Another thing worth noting is that this screenshot includes 21 tracks. In other words, Drake has plenty of songs bubbling under the billion mark. They aren’t going too fast, but they will reach 10 digits for sure.

4 – Ed Sheeran – 11 songs

Streaming’s king during the 2010s, Ed Sheeran‘s curriculum vitae remains outstanding. His top 4 add for 11.6 billion streams, an unreal number.

Shape Of You has an extra half a billion streams from various remixes, while additional versions of Perfect are near 1.2 billion, making them easily the biggest back-to-back hits of the last 10 years, although technically Galway Girl was sandwiched between them.

The last of the 5 artists tied with 11 billionaire songs, we can see that Divide claims 5 of them, while both X, No.6 Collaborations Project and = have 2 each.

All these songs are well past a billion. In fact, Ed Sheeran stands at 11 billionaire songs since Shivers got to this level way back in November 1st, 2022. The A Team will become the 12th by September 2024.

This long way is explained by the heavy drop in popularity of the artist in recent years. His top hits are still pulling good numbers, although much less than a couple of years back. His two 2023 albums were massive disappointments, with no song from – higher than 352 million, and the biggest track from Autumn Variations stalled at a mere 41 million.

We can evidence a parallel between the couples Ed Sheeran / Drake and The Weeknd / Taylor Swift. In the late 2010s, no one was even close to score the juggernaut hits that Ed Sheeran was pulling, with a broader reach than anyone else. Then, Drake had an unstoppable catalog pulling huge numbers day by day across countless of songs. The Weeknd and Taylor Swift somehow took these respective roles since the beginning of the decade.

This fab four are the four most streamed English language singers of all-time. Yet, none of them makes the top 3 on this list. Who’s ahead?

3 – Post Malone – 12 songs

So far, Post Malone‘s career looks like a cometh. It came so fast, was so big, and then it moved on. From Stoney‘s peak in October 2017, to Hollywood’s Bleeding release in September 2019, less than 2 years passed. In-between, beerbongs & bentleys came out.

Just like that, he went from being unknown to own 3 albums with a combined 12 billionaire songs – a clean 4 apiece.

Rockstar was the biggest in first place, now close to 3 billion, but Sunflower got the edge in the long run. Circles also managed to pull off the pack.

Go Flex is part of the club since February 29, 2024, and it kind of marks the end of an era. There’s nothing on sight to enlarge this club anytime soon. Next up is I Like You (A Happier Song) at 796 million, that wouldn’t crack a billion until mid-2025 at current pace. Since it is relatively recent, chances are that it will slow down too.

The top song of his last album Austin has yet to reach 150 million. Maybe Post Malone‘s best chance to get a new song added to this list soon is Fortnight, the opening track of the upcoming Taylor Swift‘s album that he features.

2 – Bad Bunny – 13 songs

A one-of-a-kind success story, Bad Bunny almost miraculously manages to get to #2 on this list of artists with the most songs above a billion streams while making exclusively Latin music.

Of course, streaming helped growing the Latin market a lot, these results are still second to none. The absence of 2 billion plus songs shows how his market is capped, yet here he is with his 13 songs in 10 digits.

Dakiti leads the way, with many Latin classics following like La Cancion, No Me Conoce, Mia, or Te Boté. We can’t help but put the spotlight on Un Verano Sin Ti though. The 2022 album, IFPI’s #1 album of the year globally on both 2022 and 2023, was met with unprecedented success. On Latin music’s context, the magnitude of its success is on Michael Jackson‘s Thriller level. It got one more record here with 6 songs in excess of 1 billion.

Moscow Mule was the last to reach the mark on December 14, 2023. Several songs are close to be added too. Considering their respective pace, the next one in line is un x100to with Grupo Frontera.

1 – Ariana Grande – 14 songs

Until her comeback this year, Ariana Grande was semi-retired for several years. She wasn’t only not releasing albums, she completely deactivated her Twitter account since late 2021, which is quite something for a pop star with a Gen Z fanbase.

Still, no one but her is leading this list, with no less than 14 songs over a billion streams. She has a streak of 5 studio albums from 2014’s My Everything to 2020’s Positions with billionaire singles. Thank u, next claims the top 2 with the title track and the overall leader, 7 rings.

The rest of the list is stacked with hits like Side to Side, One Last Time, Into You, no tears left to cry, or Bang Bang. She also enjoyed lead status on key collaborations like Save Your Tears‘ remix, Lady Gaga‘s Rain on Me and Justin Bieber‘s paired Stuck with U.

Ariana Grande last increased her total of billionaire tracks on December 23, 2023 with Santa Tell Me. She owns two previous hits on 961 million streams, looking for a billion by Q3 2024. A surprise gift may come with them as her new We Can’t Be Friends is doing wonders. These would extend her streak of albums with billion plus singles to 6, spread over 10 years.

Medal of honor

Out of the 11 artists who made this list, only 2 got additional songs over a billion with features. Their impact is significant though: both Justin Bieber and Drake would move from 11 to 15 billionaire songs with them, putting them on top.

There are also artists with less than 10 lead songs over this criteria, but that would appear with features. XXXTENTACION would move from 9 to 10. Bruno Mars from 8 to 10.

We introduce this article with Eminem, as The Monster topped a billion today. This smash inevitably features Rihanna. The Barbadian singer has 9 lead song over a billion. She would fly to 14 with features. Quite something for an artist with only one album over the last 10 years.

As for bubbling under artists yet to be mentioned, brits Coldplay, Dua Lipa, and Calvin Harris are on 9 each.

This article is being discussed in our forum, join us to share your comments! »