It goes without saying that 2020 was a year unlike any other. But that didn’t stop the creativity of the music industry and big music artists releasing songs and albums daily. Spotify has published their #2020WRAPPED which gives an insight into the most popular and most streamed artists, songs and albums of the year. This data shows the trends that shaped streaming in 2020 (specifically data from 1st January to 31st October).
The most streamed artist globally was Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny with more than 8.3 billion streams from fans around the globe. In line with this, his album YHLQMDLG which was released in February 2020 claims the number 1 spot as the most streamed album of 2020 with over 3.3 billion streams.
Under Bad Bunny the most streamed male artists of 2020 are Drake, J Balvin, Juice WRLD and The Weekend. Continuing her streak as the most streamed female artist for the second year in a row is Billie Eilish. Following her is Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa and Halsey.
The Weekend’s song “Blinding Lights” was the most streamed song of 2020 with almost 1.6 billion streams. Following this is the Tones And I viral 2019 song called “Dance Monkey” and Roddy Ricch’s song entitled “The Box.” The fourth most-streamed song was “Roses – Imanbek Remix” by Imanbek and SAINt JHN, followed by “Don’t Start Now” by Dua Lipa.
Spotify also looked at the trends that shaped streaming patterns in 2020 and noted the following statistics:
- 1.400% increase in work-from-home themed playlists
- 180% increase in health and wellness podcast listening
- 55% increase in people streaming from gaming consoles
- 50% increase in DIY stylists creating at-home haircut playlists
- 430% increase in garden-themed playlists
- 40% increase in cleaning-themed playlists
Additionally, the #BlackLivesMatter movement saw the amplification of Black voices across songs, playlists and podcasts. There was more than 64 million streams of Spotify’s Black Lives Matter playlist and nearly 65,000 playlists created by Spotify users titled “BLM” or “Black Lives Matter”.
Lastly, according to Business of Apps, Spotify has 286 million monthly active users with 130 million of these users being Spotify premium subscribers. Additionally, Spotify claims 36% of the global streaming market. The average hours spent listening to Spotify per month stands at 25 hours with 44% of users listening to Spotify on a daily basis.
