It wasn’t even close.
Repeating his performance of 2015, Drake has once again grabbed the title of Spotify’s Most-Streamed Artist in 2016. This, ironically, comes despite of an alignment with Spotify rival Apple Music, where not only did he debut his album VIEWS through the platform but he also hosts his OVO Sound Radio on their Beats 1 station.
However, Drake surpassed his own 2015 total on Spotify by leaps and bounds, racking up 4.7 billion streams on the streaming service (compared to 1.8 billion in 2015). His soon-to-be-Grammy winning single (count on it) “One Dance” accounted for almost a billion of those streams alone (970 million), while VIEWS was the most-streamed album on Spotify as well.
Drake nearly doubled up on Spotify’s Most-Streamed Female Artist, Rihanna, who notched 2.5 billion streams throughout the year. While many of the names on Spotify’s year-end lists aren’t shockers (The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, Kanye West), the most pleasant surprises come from MADEINTYO and Rob $tone, who made it to Spotify’s Top 5 Breakout artists at four and five, respectively.
Congrats to everyone on their successes.
