Streaming World: Beatles results analysis

Do you remember what you got as a Christmas present a few months ago? The gift EMI brought to Beatles fans was the availability of their catalog on streaming platforms. The following days various Medias dropped articles about how successful the operation was quoting x millions of streams on Spotify software. Well, with all due respect, even Rick Astley gets millions of streams on Spotify. Plus, checking results while the buzz is going on is not the most relevant thing to do.

How are the Beatles really performing then? To judge their popularity we obviously need to compare with other artists of their kind, meaning catalog artists. In their past Year In Music, Spotify named Michael Jackson as the Most Popular Icon. In fact, the King Of Pop has been the #1 catalog artist on the platform pretty much since its beginning, almost competing with fresh new acts. As an example, Madonna most remembered hit appears to be Like A Prayer with some 43 million streams of all its versions combined. A respectable total for sure, that wouldn’t even put the song among Michael Jackson Top 10 hits yet as his 10th biggest song, The Way You Make Me Feel, comes in at nearly 49 million with four songs over 90 million and Billie Jean at #1 with an incredible 142 million.

Do the Liverpool band fell short of Spotify Most Popular Icon then, or do they crush him? On following pages you will be presented various streaming statistics of both artists from both March 9 2016 and April 9 2016. Why those dates? Because the time frame is large enough to decrease the inflation of extra effects like the sad passing of the Beatles legendary producer George Martin. Also, it is late enough compared to the availability of the band catalog to avoid the buzz effect.

Obviously, as Michael Jackson catalog is available for much longer, absolute streaming figures are not relevant for comparison purpose so what will be compared is the gap between both dates.