Celebrating a Decade of Discovery on Spotify
It’s been 10 years since Spotify officially launched for fans—and new music and artist discovery has never been the same. We built our Swedish company to create a legal, better alternative to piracy—one that helps to fairly compensate artists for their work and shape music listening and sharing via streaming.
Since October 2008, fans all over the world have enjoyed a decade of music discovery, finding new artists and tracks to fall in love with and rediscovering old favorites. Playlists such as Discover Weekly and Release Radar make finding a new song or hearing a new band as easy as opening the Spotify app and pressing play. We are now the largest music-streaming service in the world, but we remain as laser-focused on connecting fans with artists and helping them to build their careers as we were on day one.
We now have 180 million monthly active listeners across 65 countries. And as of August 31, 2018, we have paid over 10 billion euros to rights holders since launch. Music fans on Spotify can enjoy our music library of over 40 million songs and podcasts, and 3 billion-plus user-created playlists. And to date, over 2,000 genres have been identified on Spotify, among them Wonky (electronic music characterized by synths with unusual time signatures), Shimmer Pop (a Swedish cousin of indie pop and indietronica), and British Blues (the blues … with a British flavor).
Since launch, we’ve also found that “listening diversity,” or the number of artists the average user streams per month, has risen on Spotify over the past 10 years at an average of about 8 percent per year. In the past three years alone, listening diversity increased about 40 percent on the strength of new personalized and editorial playlists—meaning people are listening to an increased number of artists on a regular basis.
Between Spotify’s expert-curated playlists, such as ¡Viva Latino!, Hot Country, and RapCaviar, as well as personalized playlists such as Discover Weekly and Daily Mix, we’ve helped music fans discover a world of new artists, allowing us to pursue our goal of supporting one million creators.
In honor of this important milestone, we’re unveiling our lists of the most-streamed artists and songs, milestones and achievements, and most influential genres over the past 10 years. Take a closer look:
Most-streamed song each year since Spotify launch
2008: The Killers – “Human”
2009: The Black Eyed Peas – “I Gotta Feeling”
2010: Eminem, Rihanna – “Love The Way You Lie”
2011: Don Omar, Lucenzo – “Danza Kuduro”
2012: Gotye, Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used To Know”
2013: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – “Can’t Hold Us” (feat. Ray Dalton)
2014: Pharrell Williams – “Happy” – from Despicable Me 2
2015: Major Lazer, MØ, DJ Snake – “Lean On”
2016: Drake – “One Dance”
2017: Ed Sheeran – “Shape of You”
Top-streamed artists of all time
1. Drake
2. Ed Sheeran
3. Eminem
4. The Weeknd
5. Rihanna
6. Kanye West
7. Coldplay
8. Justin Bieber
9. Calvin Harris
10. Ariana Grande
Most-streamed songs of all time
1. Ed Sheeran – “Shape Of You’”
2. Drake – “One Dance”
3. The Chainsmokers, Halsey – “Closer”
4. Post Malone – “rockstar” (feat. 21 Savage)
5. Ed Sheeran – “Thinking Out Loud”
6. Major Lazer, MØ, DJ Snake – “Lean On”
7. Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, Justin Bieber – “Despacito – Remix’”
8. Justin Bieber – “Love Yourself”
9. Justin Bieber – “Sorry”
10. The Chainsmokers – “Don’t Let Me Down”
First 10 artists to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify
1. Rihanna (2013)
2. David Guetta (2013)
3. Eminem (2013)
4. Kanye West (2014)
5. Avicii (2014)
6. Coldplay (2014)
7. JAY Z (2014)
8. Katy Perry (2014)
9. Drake (2014)
10. Pitbull (2014)
Most-streamed albums globally
1. Ed Sheeran – ÷
2. Justin Bieber – Purpose
3. Drake – Views
4. Ed Sheeran – x
5. Post Malone – beerbongs & bentleys
6. The Weeknd – Starboy
7. Drake – Scorpion
8. The Weeknd – Beauty Behind The Madness
9. Post Malone – Stoney
10. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.
Most-streamed female artists globally
1. Rihanna
2. Ariana Grande
3. Sia
4. Beyoncé
5. Nicki Minaj
6. Adele
7. Taylor Swift
8. Selena Gomez
9. Katy Perry
10. Shakira
Total time streamed on Spotify: 16,858,080 years
Total tracks now on Spotify: 40M+
Total playlists now on Spotify: 3B+
October 2008 Flashback – top global track, artist, and album:
Most-streamed track: Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”
Most-streamed artist: Lady Gaga
Most-streamed album: Coldplay – Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends
To continue celebrating with us, check out our Decade of Discovery playlist, which features the most-streamed songs over the past 10 years on Spotify, including favorites like Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” Hozier’s “Take Me To Church,” Kendrick Lamar’s “HUMBLE.,” Rihanna’s “Work,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Major Lazer’s “Lean On,” the star-studded “Despacito Remix,” and more.
