Most popular artists on Spotify (daily update)

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.

2020/04/21 – 14 – Bad Bunny
2020/05/04 – 22 – Drake
2020/05/26 – 3 – Bad Bunny
2020/05/29 – 2 – Drake
2020/05/31 – 26 – Bad Bunny
2020/06/26 – 18 – Drake
2020/07/13 – 80 – Juice WRLD
2020/10/01 – 48 – Drake
2020/11/18 – 11 – Ariana Grande
2020/11/29 – 108 – Bad Bunny

2021 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2021/03/17 – 12 – Drake
2021/03/29 – 54 – Justin Bieber
2021/05/23 – 10 – Drake
2021/06/02 – 1 – BTS
2021/06/02 – 18 – Olivia Rodrigo
2021/07/18 – 1 – BTS
2021/07/19 – 49 – Bad Bunny
2021/09/05 – 71 – Drake
2021/11/16 – 58 – Taylor Swift

2022 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2022/01/13 – 29 – The Weeknd
2022/02/11 – 257 – Bad Bunny
2022/10/27 – 59 – Taylor Swift
2022/12/25 – 51 – Bad Bunny

2023 Popularity index leaders

Days at #1, start date, artist.

2023/02/15 – 11 – Taylor Swift
2023/02/25 – 22 – Bad Bunny
2023/03/19 – 242+ – Taylor Swift

Top 50 most popular artists on Spotify

Last updated on 12/05/23

Rank		Popularity	Weekly +/-	Daily Streams
1	Taylor Swift	100	=	90,677,927
2	Bad Bunny	95	=	40,560,089
3	Drake	95	=	38,499,548
4	The Weeknd	93	+1	36,216,692
5	Peso Pluma	90	=	26,703,102
6	Travis Scott	90	=	18,818,364
7	Kanye West	89	=	21,792,176
8	Feid	89	+1	20,558,294
9	Jung Kook	89	=	16,978,920
10	Arijit Singh	88	=	1,183,154,403
11	Eminem	88	=	23,149,044
12	Lana Del Rey	88	=	20,536,661
13	Karol G	88	=	20,200,494
14	Junior H	88	=	20,028,091
15	21 Savage	88	+1	9,632,155
16	Justin Bieber	87	=	19,890,562
17	Olivia Rodrigo	87	=	17,026,467
18	SZA	87	=	15,594,472
19	Rihanna	87	=	14,622,059
20	Future	87	=	8,658,463
21	Ariana Grande	87	+1	-233,409,603
22	Fuerza Regida	86	=	16,590,436
23	Billie Eilish	86	=	16,279,515
24	Coldplay	86	=	15,651,827
25	Metro Boomin	86	+1	15,411,859
26	Ed Sheeran	86	=	14,983,897
27	Post Malone	86	=	14,501,472
28	Bruno Mars	86	=	14,059,104
29	Doja Cat	86	=	13,305,567
30	Zach Bryan	86	=	13,089,733
31	Kendrick Lamar	86	=	11,862,139
32	Pritam	85	=	16,474,933
33	Natanael Cano	85	=	13,909,822
34	Dua Lipa	85	=	12,440,515
35	BTS	85	=	12,299,035
36	Imagine Dragons	85	+1	11,918,160
37	Juice WRLD	85	=	11,862,280
38	Morgan Wallen	85	=	11,667,085
39	Rauw Alejandro	85	=	11,291,845
40	David Guetta	85	=	11,010,486
41	Anuel Aa	85	=	9,985,633
42	Myke Towers	85	=	9,906,848
43	Chris Brown	85	=	9,400,423
44	J. Cole	85	+1	8,899,153
45	Arctic Monkeys	84	=	12,339,738
46	Shakira	84	=	9,843,836
47	Ozuna	84	=	8,726,620
48	Lil Baby	84	=	7,585,697
49	Nicki Minaj	84	=	7,260,177
50	Lil Wayne	84	=	4,941,993

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