Most streamed artists on Spotify
Most streamed 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, they 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.
Expectedly, the most streamed artist of all-time is 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, and 60 billion by June 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, the competition is now coming strong. The runner up is no other than Taylor Swift, who’s flying after taking over the top spot among the top female singles ahead of pop icon Ariana Grande.
The 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 500 days.
The most listened to group belongs to South Korean heroes BTS. Among legacy artists, leaders are no other than rock legends Queen. Full list below.
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 streamed 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!
Most streamed artists on Spotify – Results
Filters are still in beta mode. Do not hesitate to contribute by setting up artists’ details when they are incomplete!
Would like to see song by song figures?
Most streamed artists on Spotify – How it works
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.
While the highest part of the list is comprehensive, as we go down artists may be missing. If you notice an omission, just use our streaming data tool to look for the related artist and if he scored enough streams he will automatically and instantly appear in this top. In fact, we update numbers continuously as you search for them. As soon as new daily data is in for an artist, this will be reflected in the overall ranking.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
The most streamed artist of all-time is the Canadian rapper Drake. He leads ahead of Latin star Bad Bunny and American icon Taylor Swift.
The most streamed female artist of all-time is Taylor Swift. Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish complete the podium, while Dua Lipa and Rihanna claim the fourth and fifth spot, respectively.
The most streamed group of all-time is BTS. South Korean heroes lead over Coldplay and Imagine Dragons.
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) of all-time is Shape of You by Ed Sheeran. The most streamed track (with no side versions) is Blinding Lights by The Weeknd.
We have more for you
… and all of our streaming tops and tools
And check out our streaming lab for explanations on how those pages work.