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 12/05/23
RankArtistPopularityWeekly +/-Daily Streams
1TaylorTaylor Swift100=90,677,927
2BadBad Bunny95=40,560,089
3DrakeDrake95=38,499,548
4TheThe Weeknd93+136,216,692
5PesoPeso Pluma90=26,703,102
6TravisTravis Scott90=18,818,364
7KanyeKanye West89=21,792,176
8FeidFeid89+120,558,294
9JungJung Kook89=16,978,920
10ArijitArijit Singh88=1,183,154,403
11EminemEminem88=23,149,044
12LanaLana Del Rey88=20,536,661
13KarolKarol G88=20,200,494
14JuniorJunior H88=20,028,091
152121 Savage88+19,632,155
16JustinJustin Bieber87=19,890,562
17OliviaOlivia Rodrigo87=17,026,467
18SZASZA87=15,594,472
19RihannaRihanna87=14,622,059
20FutureFuture87=8,658,463
21ArianaAriana Grande87+1-233,409,603
22FuerzaFuerza Regida86=16,590,436
23BillieBillie Eilish86=16,279,515
24ColdplayColdplay86=15,651,827
25MetroMetro Boomin86+115,411,859
26EdEd Sheeran86=14,983,897
27PostPost Malone86=14,501,472
28BrunoBruno Mars86=14,059,104
29DojaDoja Cat86=13,305,567
30ZachZach Bryan86=13,089,733
31KendrickKendrick Lamar86=11,862,139
32PritamPritam85=16,474,933
33NatanaelNatanael Cano85=13,909,822
34DuaDua Lipa85=12,440,515
35BTSBTS85=12,299,035
36ImagineImagine Dragons85+111,918,160
37JuiceJuice WRLD85=11,862,280
38MorganMorgan Wallen85=11,667,085
39RauwRauw Alejandro85=11,291,845
40DavidDavid Guetta85=11,010,486
41AnuelAnuel Aa85=9,985,633
42MykeMyke Towers85=9,906,848
43ChrisChris Brown85=9,400,423
44J.J. Cole85+18,899,153
45ArcticArctic Monkeys84=12,339,738
46ShakiraShakira84=9,843,836
47OzunaOzuna84=8,726,620
48LilLil Baby84=7,585,697
49NickiNicki Minaj84=7,260,177
50LilLil Wayne84=4,941,993

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