Taylor Swift is Spotify’s 2023 most-streamed artiste

NEW YORK – Spotify released its highly detailed annual survey of its listeners’ streaming habits on Nov 29.

As in previous years, the Spotify data dump was a social media occasion, giving music fans the stats they need to show off their taste and perhaps pick fights with those who do not share it.

The data showed that Taylor Swift was the most-streamed artiste in 2023, with more than 26.1 billion streams on Spotify, the company said.

The 33-year-old American pop superstar is the first female artiste to claim the top spot since the platform started Spotify Wrapped in 2015.

Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny – Spotify’s top-streamed artiste for the last three years – was the runner-up. It was not a close second, said Ms Sulinna Ong, Spotify’s global head of editorial.

“Bad Bunny has had an enormous year and is still very much leading the cultural conversation,” Ms Ong said in an interview.

“What’s significant this year, and what I have loved seeing, is the dominance of female artistes, not just in music, but also in the cultural conversation, like with the Barbie movie. That’s been the tone of 2023.”

The rest of the global top five included The Weeknd, Drake and Peso Pluma. In the United States, Swift was No. 1, followed by Drake, Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd and Bad Bunny.

Swift was also the champion on Apple’s streaming platform and was named Apple Music’s Artist of the Year. According to Apple, Swift had 65 songs reach Apple Music’s Global Daily Top 100 – more than any other artiste – in the first 10 months of 2023.

More Apple Music subscribers also listened to Swift in 2023 than to any other artiste, setting a new all-time record for the most listeners for any artiste in a single year on Apple Music.

In the days before the Spotify Wrapped announcement, the music platform dropped hints on billboards in 21 cities, including Sao Paulo, Brazil; Jakarta, Indonesia; and New York. Swifties began trying to decode them for hidden messages.

On TikTok, fans traded theories about an online image that seemed to show Swift with orange-tinted hair. Some of them offered the theory that the colour orange signalled the imminent arrival of an album, Karma, that some of her supporters believe is locked in a vault.

Swift did not drop a secret album but did make a track, You’re Losing Me (From The Vault), available for the first time on streaming platforms on Nov 29.

She also recorded a short “Thank You” video, available to some Spotify users as part of the Wrapped campaign.

Numerous other artistes, including Dolly Parton and SZA, recorded thank-you videos and released them to select Spotify users on Wednesday, Ms Ong said.

The Wrapped campaign involves a complicated calculus of streaming data and listening habits.

User data is tracked from January until just a few weeks before the campaign is released to provide an accurate, and surprisingly introspective, depiction of what went into listeners’ ears over the last 11 months.

Spotify’s release of listener data, which is designed to be easily shareable on social media, doubles as a marketing push.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, and other platforms, Swifties traded notes on how many minutes they had spent in 2023 listening to their favourite singer.

“So Spotify Wrapped is out, and I can’t say I’m shocked! 116,000 minutes,” wrote one.

“I spent 40,952 minutes with Taylor this year,” another fan wrote.

Not everyone shared in the excitement about Swift’s statistical victory.

“Happy Spotify Wrapped Day to all who celebrate. Many blessings,” wrote a non-fan. “Except to those of you who have Taylor Swift in your Top 5.” NYTIMES