Streaming World: Beatles results analysis

 MIKE OR THE FAB FOUR FOR PRESIDENT?

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Have you done the math’s already?

The Beatles overall total up to March 9 2016: 461 173 000
The Beatles overall total up to April 9 2016: 555 379 000
Michael Jackson overall total up to March 9 2016: 1 740 149 000
Michael Jackson overall total up to April 9 2016: 1 803 614 000

In other words, during those 31 days, the Beatles songs have been played on Spotify 94 206 000 times against 63 465 000 times for Michael Jackson tracks, a lead of 48%. End of story? Not even close.

Looking precisely on Beatles figures, we may notice the total to March 9 was realized on 76 days while the second came 31 days later. It means they averaged 6,07 million streamings per day during the first period while averaging 3,04 million during the latter period. It remains to be seen if the current trend is the one to be expected during upcoming months or if they still have artificially inflated results due to the long retention of their tracks up to last Christmas.

The second key element is the nature of a streaming. Every play is not completely equal. In fact, the Beatles come from the 60s when tracks were running for much less time than during the 80s or latter.

We already referred to the 16,1 million streams managed by 9 tracks of Thriller album during the 1-month period. In the same time, taking all 27 tracks of Beatles compilation One add for a 38,2 million tally. The point is that plays of One tracks represent 7,2 billion of seconds while Thriller songs add for 4,6 billion.

Following figures show a comparison of total time elapsed by all Spotify users on each artist by applying average running time of tracks from both of them.

Plays – Average Time – Total Time – Artist

94,206,000 – 3:09 – 17,849,299,457 – The Beatles
63,465,000 – 4:45 – 18,096,227,690 – Michael Jackson

The result is quite intriguing as both artist have been listened to for almost the same time, 17,85 billion seconds to 18,1 seconds – as few as 566 years to 573 years – a difference of a mere 1,3% in favor of Michael Jackson which is basically a tie.

A third element then comes into place. Spotify is not the be-all end-all of the Streaming world. Michael Jackson is famously known for his music videos pushing various listeners playing his songs on Youtube instead of a proper music platform. In the same period of 9 of March to 9 of April, he managed an unbelievable 220 616 203 Youtube views to 29 767 721 for the Beatles, a 7,4 to 1 domination. Those views should not be added to Spotify streamings as they mostly come from different community of users, but one may keep in mind that bigger are an artist views on Youtube more potential streamings are lost on Spotify.

Conclusion

While it is difficult to tell who’s the winner among both artists and Beatles results evolution in following months has yet to be seen, let remind I have been comparing them to Michael Jackson. As mentioned at the start of the article, he is the absolute king of catalog streaming with a 3 to 2 lead over the main competitors like Queen.

Thus, independently of the British quartet being ahead or not of the moonwalker, the arrival of the Beatles on streaming platforms is definitely successful and ahead of all other classic bands by a mile. Once again, they are proving the never ending appeal of their catalog no matter of the support concerned.