Most popular artists on Spotify

How do you know which artists are the most popular on Spotify? Monthly listeners hardly tell you the truth of it and Spotify’s popularity index alone isn’t so easy to read. We are shading a lot on this key indicator for you.

Most popular artists – How it works

What does this top mean?

We know that the popularity index is both poorly known and not so user friendly as it’s a 0-to-100 index rather than raw data. It’s based on ongoing streams relative to remaining artists, with the biggest one being rated 100.

Internally, this index is key as it’s used as part of algorithms which create and update playlists, bringing a huge value for artists. The highest the popularity index of an artist, the more visible he will get on Spotify.

Convinced of its importance for a long time, we developed this page to retrieve the top 50 best performers of the platform, but also how many daily streams they recorded. This last statistic, unique online, adds to the popularity index the concrete meaning it lacks.

In general, an artist will need 10 million daily streams to hit a score of 90, about twice as many streams as the global #1 single usually gets. You have read this correctly. An artist noted 90 gains a lot more streams than the current #1 smash.

As numbers reflect a scale 100 based on the top performer, the score of an artist can go up or down even when he is consistent by himself. For example, the madness surrounding Taylor Swift in the second half of 2023 pushed artists amassing 10 million streams per day down to roughly 83.

While the exact formula isn’t shared by Spotify, the scale is exponential, with streams doubling every 5 points. It means that an artist scoring 95 gets about twice as many streams as an artist at 90, itself scoring twice as much as an artist at 85.

This indicator ends up showing how healthy a catalog is, something fundamental to become one of the most popular artists on Spotify.

How do we build this top?

The daily streaming total includes streams on which an artist is featured. The page also displays the 1-week evolution of the index.

We may miss the daily streams total for some entries in this list. No worries, this will last only 24 hours in general. More than 1,500 of the biggest stars are tracked to make sure to not miss artists.

Also, at times daily streams can show a negative total, something happening when one or several songs from an artist are made unavailable by Spotify.

Some history & records

Our own history of rating scores dates back to April 2020. Premium users can see former ratings of artists at this link.

As of November 15, 2023, the leader is no other than Taylor Swift. In fact, she took over the top position on March 19, 2023 and never gave it up. Below are all leaders since April 21, 2020.

2020 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2021 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2022 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2023 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

Top 50 most popular artists on Spotify

Last updated on 12/06/23
RankArtistPopularityWeekly +/-Daily Streams
1TaylorTaylor Swift100=97,482,397
2DrakeDrake95=44,926,552
3BadBad Bunny95=44,229,542
4TheThe Weeknd93+139,805,764
5TravisTravis Scott90=21,796,246
6PesoPeso Pluma90=-446,722,356
7KanyeKanye West89=25,389,831
8FeidFeid89+123,744,272
9JungJung Kook89=18,180,049
10ArijitArijit Singh88=92,115,801
11EminemEminem88=25,189,532
12LanaLana Del Rey88=22,885,193
13KarolKarol G88=22,423,915
14JuniorJunior H88=20,779,046
152121 Savage88=11,326,115
16ArianaAriana Grande87=279,444,185
17JustinJustin Bieber87=20,527,702
18SZASZA87=17,526,719
19RihannaRihanna87=16,261,792
20OliviaOlivia Rodrigo87=12,571,033
21FutureFuture87=10,155,728
22BillieBillie Eilish86=18,255,383
23MetroMetro Boomin86+117,796,392
24FuerzaFuerza Regida86=16,587,974
25ColdplayColdplay86=16,576,212
26PostPost Malone86=16,473,961
27EdEd Sheeran86=15,632,770
28ZachZach Bryan86=15,481,099
29BrunoBruno Mars86=14,930,013
30DojaDoja Cat86=14,481,406
31KendrickKendrick Lamar86=13,982,108
32PritamPritam85=16,761,637
33DuaDua Lipa85=14,115,769
34NatanaelNatanael Cano85=13,992,827
35ImagineImagine Dragons85+113,482,767
36BTSBTS85=13,419,326
37MorganMorgan Wallen85=13,322,471
38CarinCarin Leon85+112,934,313
39JuiceJuice WRLD85=12,824,930
40AnuelAnuel Aa85=11,043,797
41MykeMyke Towers85=11,020,243
42ChrisChris Brown85=10,639,990
43J.J. Cole85+110,560,193
44DavidDavid Guetta85=-51,038,511
45RauwRauw Alejandro85=-630,579,272
46$uicideBoy$$uicideBoy$84=11,769,246
47QuevedoQuevedo84=11,424,296
48GrupoGrupo Frontera84=11,332,944
49LilLil Baby84=9,023,896
50AnirudhAnirudh Ravichander84=-295,872,355

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