Most followed artists on Spotify

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.

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-followerd artists’ record holders

The current #1 singer on Spotify is no other than Ed Sheeran. The popularity of the British musician is going down lately, but he still holds a comfortable lead.

While he made headlines in July 2022 when he became the first artist to hit 100 million followers, he has been on top for many years.

The last one to lead was 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.

For the first time in a very long time though he is now seriously challenging, with both Indian music legend Arijit Singh and American pop icon Taylor Swift increasing much faster than anyone else, currently ranking at 2 and 4, respectively.

At current pace, both will fight for the top spot in less than a year. The latter is on her way to become the most-followed female artist, a title currently held by Ariana Grande, who is 3rd overall. The top 5 is completed by another female singer, Ocean Eyes’ star Billie Eilish.

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 8.

Most followed artists – Full list

Filters are still in beta mode. Do not hesitate to contribute by setting up artists’ details when they are incomplete!

Want to know more about where an artist is listened to?

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.

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.