Being the most popular music streaming service in the world, there is probably no better company than Spotify to crown the song of the year. And so it has become a nice tradition for the Swedish company to publish its Year in Music list every December, treating us to some interesting insights about what the world was listening to in the year gone by.
According to this year’s list, Ed Sheeran was clearly the most popular artist of 2017. Not only did the British singer-songwriter single-handedly rack up 6.3 billion streams this year (Drake clinched number one with 4.7 billion streams in 2016), he also took home the trophies for the most streamed album (Divide – 3.1 billion streams) and the most streamed song (Shape of You – 1.4 billion streams).
As our chart illustrates, the most-streamed songs of the past five years also tell us something about the increase in music listening on Spotify. While Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop” was the most-streamed song of 2013 with “just” 160 million streams, this year’s smash hit from Ed Sheeran was played nearly nine times as often.
You will find more statistics at Statista
