Spotify has revealed its most streamed artist of 2015 and it’s not Adele! Seriously, as we all know, Adele has not allowed 25, the album that took over the world, on streaming services so this is one award (that, and perhaps a Nobel Peace Prize) that she won’t receive this year.
The honor goes to Drake, whose music garnered more than 1.8 million streams in 2015, many from his chart-topping album If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. Looks like someone is definitely still calling him (or at least streaming him) on his cell phone.
Interestingly, the three best selling albums so far of 2015 are 25, Taylor Swift’s 1989(which, although it came out in 2014, has continued to sell strongly throughout this year) and If You’re Reading This. They are the only three titles that have sold more than 1 million copies this calendar year. If You’re Reading This is the only one that is available for streaming on Spotify.
Would he have sold more if he’d withheld the album from Spotify? Conventional wisdom says yes, but conventional wisdom hasn’t gotten us very far while we’re trying to figure out if steaming promotes or prohibits album sales and how to compensate artists and songwriters fairly. Another example to muddy the waters: Justin Bieber’s new album,Purpose, sold a staggering 649,000 equivalent albums in its first week and set a record for the most Spotify streams in a single day. On Nov. 13, the day of Purpose’s release, his songs (from the new album and catalog) were streamed 36 million times. The equivalent album sales tally includes streaming; the album sold 522,000 in pure album sales.
If you look at the other top artists on Spotify for 2015, their music may be very different from each other, but they all appeal to a predominantly younger, 12-to-34, audience—one that has embraced streaming wholeheartedly.
Following Drake, the other artists in the top 5 in the U.S. are The Weeknd, Kanye West, Ed Sheeran and Eminem. No women cracked the top 5. The top 5 females in the U.S. are Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Rihanna, Ariana Grande and Lana Del Rey. Globally, Rihanna topped the list with more than 1 billion streams.
If You’re Reading This was the most listened to album on Spotify in the U.S. followed by The Weeknd’s Beauty Behind The Madness, Fetty Wap’s self-titled album, Big Sean’sDark Sky Paradise, and Rae Sremmurd’s SremmLife.
Source: Forbes
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