Only 14 artists have been streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify – and you can find pretty much all of them in the Year in Music selection just revealed from Spotify, based on more than 7 billion hours of music played by nearly 50 million users.
Meanwhile – in traditional music sales world – just a single artist’s album went platinum: Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’ – one of the few you still can’t find on Spotify.
The Top 5 charts here won’t surprise you: Katy Perry is the top female artist, and Ed Sheeran the top male. Both are also featured in Top Album and Top Songs charts: ‘X’ was the most played album of the year, while the hit ‘Dark Horse’ performed fourth overall.
The top emerging artists of the year were alt-J, Royal Blood, Tove Lo, Future Islands, and Jungle.
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Amongst the other top artists of 2014, I’m still not surprised to find Ariana Grande (second artist, fifth album, and tenth most streamed song), and Eminem (second artist of the year, and the most streamed artist ever on Spotify to date). Guess what’s the most streamed song of the year? ‘Happy’, by Pharrell Williams. This is the only chart that you can actually localize: for instance, top song in the US is ‘Fancy’ by Iggy Azalea while ‘Waves – Robin Shulz’ by Mr. Probz secured the title in the UK.
Could be more interesting to see what your own year in music is made of: mine turned out to be all about Milky Chance, Vampire Weekend, and The 1975. Get yours here and let us know in the comments below about your own year in music.
Image credit: JStone / Shutterstock.com
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