Most popular artists on Spotify

How do you know which artists are the most popular on Spotify right now? Monthly listeners hardly tell you the truth of it and Spotify’s popularity index isn’t so easy to read although it’s key to understanding one’s success. Let’s shed some light on popularity on Spotify.

Top 250 most popular artists on Spotify

# g# pic Artist Popularity Daily Streams +/- artist_spotify_id Country Genre Language Gender
1 Taylor Swift 100 61,418,565 = 06HL4z0CvFAxyc27GXpf02 United States of America Pop English Solo - Female
2 The Weeknd 96 41,914,258 +1 1Xyo4u8uXC1ZmMpatF05PJ Canada Pop English Solo - Male
3 Drake 96 30,788,122 = 3TVXtAsR1Inumwj472S9r4 Canada Hip-hop English Solo - Male
4 Billie Eilish 95 42,582,081 = 6qqNVTkY8uBg9cP3Jd7DAH United States of America Alternative English Solo - Female
5 Sabrina Carpenter 95 37,502,500 = 74KM79TiuVKeVCqs8QtB0B United States of America Pop English Solo - Female
6 Bad Bunny 95 31,902,667 = 4q3ewBCX7sLwd24euuV69X Puerto Rico Reggaeton Spanish Solo - Male
7 Travis Scott 94 23,925,306 = 0Y5tJX1MQlPlqiwlOH1tJY United States of America Hip-hop English Solo - Male
8 Bruno Mars 93 30,268,466 = 0du5cEVh5yTK9QJze8zA0C United States of America Pop English Solo - Male
9 Peso Pluma 93 27,305,430 = 12GqGscKJx3aE4t07u7eVZ Mexico Regional Mexican Spanish Solo - Male
10 Kanye West 93 26,299,326 = 5K4W6rqBFWDnAN6FQUkS6x United States of America Hip-hop English Solo - Male
11 Eminem 93 24,400,924 = 7dGJo4pcD2V6oG8kP0tJRR United States of America Hip-hop English Solo - Male
12 Future 93 19,686,632 = 1RyvyyTE3xzB2ZywiAwp0i United States of America Hip-hop English Solo - Male
13 Linkin Park 92 28,569,480 +1 6XyY86QOPPrYVGvF9ch6wz United States of America Hard Rock / Metal English Group - Mixed
14 Ariana Grande 92 24,176,203 = 66CXWjxzNUsdJxJ2JdwvnR United States of America Pop English Solo - Female
15 Lana Del Rey 92 22,772,083 = 00FQb4jTyendYWaN8pK0wa United States of America Alternative English Solo - Female
16 Karol G 92 20,643,833 = 790FomKkXshlbRYZFtlgla Colombia Reggaeton Spanish Solo - Female
17 Feid 92 20,008,374 = 2LRoIwlKmHjgvigdNGBHNo Colombia Reggaeton Spanish Solo - Male
18 Post Malone 92 19,101,284 = 246dkjvS1zLTtiykXe5h60 United States of America Pop English Solo - Male
19 Kendrick Lamar 92 19,029,959 = 2YZyLoL8N0Wb9xBt1NhZWg United States of America Hip-hop English Solo - Male
20 Lady Gaga 91 25,417,481 +1 1HY2Jd0NmPuamShAr6KMms United States of America Pop English Solo - Female
21 Coldplay 91 22,551,255 = 4gzpq5DPGxSnKTe4SA8HAU United Kingdom Alternative English Group - Male
22 Rihanna 91 18,407,157 = 5pKCCKE2ajJHZ9KAiaK11H Barbados Pop English Solo - Female
23 Morgan Wallen 91 14,392,878 = 4oUHIQIBe0LHzYfvXNW4QM United States of America Country English Solo - Male
24 Zach Bryan 91 0 = 40ZNYROS4zLfyyBSs2PGe2 United States of America Country English Solo - Male
25 Arijit Singh 90 21,394,877 = 4YRxDV8wJFPHPTeXepOstw India Indian Film Music Hindi Solo - Male
Artist Country Genre Language Gender

Want to check the detailed streaming numbers for one artist?

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: 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 though, this index is key as it’s used as part of algorithms which create and update playlists, bringing a huge value for artists. The higher the popularity index of the artist, the more visible they will get on Spotify. It also reflects the number one artists today, with results from the last weeks, as opposed to cumulative to date streams.

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 scoring 90 is gaining far 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 they are consistent by themselves. 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.

We have more for you