Drake trumps Bieber as Spotify’s most streamed act

Drake has trumped fellow Canadian superstar Justin Bieber as the most streamed artist ever on Spotify. His songs have been streamed 3.2 billion times on the service – 10 million times more than Bieber, who’s had 3,175,636,461 plays.

According to analytics aggregator Kworb, the third most streamed act is Ed Sheeran, with 2.15 billion plays.

What is impressive about Drake’s achievement is that he’d only been on Spotify for a week. His Views album had been an Apple Music exclusive for two weeks, with 245.1 million listens in the U.S. during the first week (a new record for Apple and for US streaming figures) and becoming the most streamed UK #1 album in history. It also set a new record in Canada with 23 million.

The album only appeared on Spotify on May 13 before continuing its dazzling performance. At the same time, lead-off single One Dance is topping Spotify’s Global Top 50, with nearly 6.5 million daily plays.

Views went Platinum in one week for sales of 1.03 million due heavily to the inclusion of Hotline Bling – which had over a billion streams – were retroactively included in the total sales count. As a result it’s become the first album released in 2016 to sell over a million. The other is Adele’s 25 which of course was issued late last year.

Drake has also become Spotify’s most popular artist in the past month – passing his collaborator and long rumoured girlfriend Rihanna. The Canadian has 33.7 million monthly active listeners on Spotify – over a third of its total user base. His greatest amount of fans are in London, followed by Los Angeles, Mexico City, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Rihanna has 31.9 million and Bieber is at #3 with 27.5 million.

The Rihanna romance rumours have been around for seven years. But they went into overdrive of late after the hot music video accompanying her track Work on which Drake features. Drake addressed the rumours this month when he hosted Saturday Night Live for the second time. During a song, he impersonated Rhianna, putting on a brown wig and a Bajan accent, to sing, “I swear we’re only friend, friend, friend, friend, friends.”

This month Drake joined US business magazine Forbes’ richest rappers with a US$60 million net worth. In the Hip-Hop Cash Kings list (topped by Diddy with $750 million), Drake is now in the Top 5 replacing 50 Cent whose music career is at a standstill and a series of million-dollar lawsuits sent him into bankruptcy last year.

In 2010 Drake was low on the list with $9 million. But he had shot forward with huge record sales, concert grosses and seven figure endorsements including the likes of Virginia Black whisky, Apple Music, The Toronto Raptors, Nike NKE -1.24% (for whom he’s launched his Views themed OVO x Air Jordans) and Sprite. His assets include a $8 million house with one of the most luxurious pools in the world with its own grottos in the gated neighbourhood of Hidden Hills in California (also home to Kanye West, the Kardashians and Justin Bieber), a lucrative merchandising business and his OVO Sound record label.

Spotify itself has hit a milestone of its own: its in-house playlists are generating over 1 billion streams a week. These include Rap Caviar, Baila Reggaeton, Progressive City Nights, New House, Today’s Top Hits, Weekend Hangouts, Get Turnt, Deep Focus, Teen Party and Exitos de Hoy.

“We build these playlists through a combination of the best music experts around, lots of work hunting for great sounds, and a ‘feedback loop’ of real-time user data that tells us which tracks listeners are loving more, and which tracks they may be loving a little less,” points out Chief Strategy and Content Officer, Stefan Blom.

“This lets us add tracks that are starting to explode, and switch out tracks that have been around for a while.”