Spotify’s historic big-hitters tend to be anthems – who hasn’t cued-up Livin’ on a Prayer (number 7 from the 1980s) or Wonderwall (earned Oasis $2.5 million on Spotify) at a party or on a road trip?Īnd special mention has to go to the true champions of Spotify, the masters of the anthem: Queen. The top ten for each decade provides a curious window into each period. Click the tabs to switch between decades. We calculated the top-earning songs on Spotify from each decade since the 1960s. Classic Rock and Pop Anthems Are Hits Across the Decades Its 1.09 billion streams earned Harris and Rihanna around $2,680,300. This track is number 88 in our hit parade. Rihanna does appear in our chart, though, guesting on Calvin Harris’s This Is What You Came For. Sheeran and his songwriting team originally conceived the song for Rihanna, but held it back at the last minute. Shape Of You has over 2.68 billion plays, adding more than $6.5 million to Sheeran’s wealth. Say what you will about Ed Sheeran, people keep playing his music. Sertanejo star Marília Mendonça is the most-heard woman on Spotify in Brazil, and we estimate she has earned $6.6 million through the service. For K-pop, it’s boy band BTS, who partnered with Spotify to create a unique album promotion for 2020’s BE album. Outlying genres include K-pop and Sertanejo, which are each represented by just one top-100 artist. Music lovers outside of Latin America might be surprised to find reggaetón makes a healthy third-place appearance with 20 top artists – including overall number two J Balvin. Pop is the second-top genre (29 artists). Hip-hop/R&B is the most represented genre in our study, with 33 of the top 100 artists performing in this flavor. Click the tabs to sort the artists by genre. This chart shows Spotify’s highest earners overall. Hip-Hop/R&B Artists Dominate Spotify Rich List Outside of Spotify, she was named the 25 th top-earning celebrity in 2021. Playing hard-to-get with Spotify seems to have cost Swift a higher position. Noted streaming cynic Taylor Swift is number 40 with $10.5 million. Her $27.2 million paycheck makes Grande the eighth highest earner of all. The company promoted the Canadian’s work through the service’s first global takeover and has strapped his image to playlists that don’t even feature Drake’s music.Īriana Grande is the top-earning woman on Spotify. Drake has long been Spotify’s favorite son. With estimated earnings of nearly $53.5 million from the platform, Drake towers over the next highest earners: J Balvin, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, and Ed Sheeran have each made $36-38 million each. Drake Earned $15M (or 37%) More Than Closest Rival J Balvinĭrake is the king of Spotify. The highest-earning song from before 2010 is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which has made $3,349,150 on Spotify.Spotify’s 10 highest-earners have made a combined $337,485,480 from the platform.The top-grossing song on Spotify is Shape of You, which earned Ed Sheeran $6,566,000.Drake is Spotify’s highest earner, with an estimated haul of $52,546,150.Here’s Spotify’s 2021 “Rich List” – by star, genre, and hit record. Top Dollar calculated the earnings of 100 top-earning (living) Spotify artists and the 100 most-played songs on the service.
So, while everyone knows that it’s streambait-or-bust for unknown artists, just how well are the famous ones doing? It’s clear that the Spotify economy looks very different depending on where you’re standing.
On the other hand, top stars make millions of dollars per song on the service. Damon from Galaxie 500 takes a more forensic approach: “Spotify… sent songwriting royalties of $1.05 for the 5,960 times our single “Tugboat” was played that quarter-split between the group’s three members, each of us had made 35 cents.” “I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music,” says Taylor Swift – whose love-hate relationship with Spotify is well-documented. But like any big star, everybody’s looking to see how Spotify spends its wealth. Spotify might just be the biggest star in 21 st century music.