Taylor Swift was the biggest-selling recording artist globally in 2023 – for the second consecutive year and the fourth time to date

Credit: Press

Taylor Swift has been crowned as IFPI‘s Global Recording Artist Of The Year for 2023.

The news, announced on Wednesday (February 21), arrived at the same time that IFPI named the 20 artists that make up its Global Recording Artist Chart for 2023.

Swift scoring the No.1 spot on the chart for 2023 marks the second year in a row that the superstar has achieved that accolade, and the fourth time to date, following successes in 2014 and 2019.

This year marks the eleventh year of the IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year Award.

According to IFPI, the global recorded music trade body, its Global Recording Artist Chart “provide[s] the most complete picture of artist, album and track performance worldwide”.

It adds: “The Charts capture streaming, downloads and physical formats in every country directly from the participating record labels, which is then converted using IFPI’s unique methodology to a single, global chart figure.”

IFPI says that “the methodology, developed in partnership with IFPI’s member record labels, reflects global commercial success by combining the most exhaustive reporting of unit sales and streams with the country-level economics of each consumption type”.



You can see the full Top 20 below:



IFPI’s announcement tops off a significantly successful year for Taylor Swift.

In December, Pollstar reported that the superstar artist’s record-breaking ‘Eras Tour’ had become the first tour in history to generate gross revenues of over $1 billion.

Swift was also last year’s most-streamed artist globally on Spotify, achieving more than 26.1 billion global streams on the platform.

Plus, in the United States, according to Luminate data, Swift’s music was responsible for 1 in every 78 on-demand audio streams in the market last year.

As we noted last month, if Swift were a record label – which, by owning her own recorded music copyrights (post-Big Machine era), she kind of is – that ‘1 in 78’ stat would equate to her claiming a US market share of audio streams of 1.28% in 2023.

That’s a bigger audio streaming market share than both the entire Jazz (0.8%) and Classical (0.9%) genres, according to Luminate data, as well as the entire ‘Children’s’ genre (1.1%).


Elsewhere in IFPI’s Global Recording Artist Chart for 2023, K-Pop stars SEVENTEEN and Stray Kids placed second and third respectively.

Their appearance in the chart formed part of an interesting trend, with four South Korea-based K-Pop acts featured in the Top 10 with TOMORROW X TOGETHER AT No.7 and NewJeans at No.8, respectively.

K-Pop acts IVE and NCT Dream also made their first appearances in the IFPI Global Artist Chart Top 20, at No.12 and No.15 respectively.

US country star Morgan Wallen (No.6) also made his first-ever appearance in the IFPI Global Artist chart, following the success of his album, One Thing At A Time.

Wallen’s One Thing At A Time was the most streamed album in the US in 2023, according to Luminate’s 2023 Year End report (see below).



Elsewhere in IFPI’s Global Recording Artist Chart for 2023, Lana Del Rey also entered the Top 10 for the first time at No.10, beating her previous high of No.17 in 2014.

Outside the Top 10, Japanese stars King & Prince and US artists SZA and Zach Bryan also made their IFPI Global Artist Chart debuts.

IFPI notes that eight of the Top 20 artists in 2023 made an appearance in the chart for the first time.

“Taylor is a singular talent and her commitment to her craft and her fans is truly phenomenal.”

Lewis Morrison, IFPI

Lewis Morrison, Director of Charts and Certifications at IFPI said: “We are immensely proud to award the IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year Award to Taylor Swift for the fourth time, as she continues to redefine the limits of global success. Taylor is a singular talent and her commitment to her craft and her fans is truly phenomenal.

“It is also fantastic to see so many artists entering the chart for the first time, and the return of established acts years after their last appearance.

“As the global recorded music landscape shifts and new opportunities emerge, record companies continue their work to build global, long-term careers for their artists.”Music Business Worldwide