WITH the end of the year comes another Spotify Wrapped – a great way to analyse your year of listening habits and compare with your friends and family.
On a micro-level, this allowed people to look back at their history and wonder why they spent so much time revisiting Kardinal Offishall. On a macro-level, it helps us understand which artists received the biggest number of streams from Spotify’s 381 million users around the world. Below is a list of 2021’s most-streamed artists and songs.
Top-streamed artists
In fifth place was Justin Bieber, who achieved big streaming numbers through his sixth studio album Justice. In August 2021, Bieber broke the all-time record for the most monthly listeners in Spotify history, having achieved a peak of 94.5 million monthly listeners on the platform to-date
Three-time number one on this list Drake took fourth place in 2021 as his Certified Lover Boy destroyed Kanye’s Donda in streams, surpassing one billion in half the time it took Donda to reach 94 million. According to Chart Data, the Canadian rapper was the most-streamed artist of the 2010s decade with 36.3 billion.
K-pop group and newcomer to this list BTS came in at third, gathering a huge amount of streams from their 2021 song Butter.
Taylor Swift was the 2nd most-streamed artist in the world and is reportedly worth a whopping $365 million (£271 million) as of the end of2021. The singer has been busy over the last two years and continued to ride the success of her 2020 albums folklore and evermore, before releasing albums Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) in 2021.
READ ALSO: How Much Did Artists Earn From Spotify in 2021?
Puerto Rican Reggaeton artist Bad Bunny took the top spot for most-streamed artists in 2021 for the second year running with more than 9.1 billion streams, surpassing last year’s 8.3 billion. An achievement made even more impressive by the fact that he didn’t even release an album last year.
Top-streamed songs
Dua Lipa’s Levitating featuring DaBaby was the fifth most-streamed song of 2021 with 1.15 billion and signalled the end of an excellent year for Lipa as she celebrated NYE in St. Barths.
This was followed by good 4 u by Olivia Rodrigo, narrowly ahead with 1.16 billion. Good 4 u also won Spotify’s Song of the Summer – unlikely to be the only award she wins this month.
Since the song’s release on May 14th, good 4 u has been added to more than 18 million playlists and claimed the top spot in markets like the U.S., Australia, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, the U.K., South Africa, and the United Arab Emirates.
Third place was taken by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s STAY, then in second place was MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) by Lil Nas X with 1.2 billion streams, boosted by the critical acclaim his debut album received in 2021.
And finally, the song with the most streams in 2021 globally was Olivia Rodrigo again with drivers license, which exploded on TikTok last year and garnered a whopping 1.23 billion streams on Spotify. What a year it has been for the 18-year-old.
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