The number of monthly listeners an artist maintains on Spotify is a key indicator of where they sit in the ranking of the most popular acts in the world.
That monthly number changes every day; Spotify updates its metric every 24 hours.
But you might be surprised how little the global No.1 artist on Spotify, in terms of monthly listeners, changes.
This year, that No.1 spot has largely been dominated by two artists: The Weeknd, who was Spotify’s No.1 act during the first couple of months of 2022; and Ed Sheeran, who has more recently climbed into pole position.
To keep better tabs on the performance of the globe’s biggest artists on Spotify, Music Business Worldwide is now actively keeping an eye on the monthly listener rankings of superstars on the platform.
That starts today, as we count down the Top 20 artists – by global monthly listeners – on Spotify as of yesterday evening (May 17).
Expect regular updates on this league table as we move throughout the rest of the year.
As you can see below, with just over 84 million monthly listeners, Ed Sheeran remains comfortably in the lead, despite having not released a new studio album since = in October 2021.
With 84.31 million monthly listeners, Sheeran is just shy of 5 million ahead of Justin Bieber, who has 79.66 million.
Bieber in turn just pips The Weeknd (with 76.59 million monthly listeners) to the No.2 position.
Other artists to make the current Top 20 include Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, and Drake.
Interesting fact: Four of the current Top Six artists on Spotify globally (Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, and Coldplay) are British; the other two (Justin Bieber and The Weeknd) are Canadian.
Spotify recently announced that, at the close of March 2022, it counted 422 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) worldwide.
That figure was up by 16 million quarter-on-quarter.
It means that, with those 84.31 million monthly listeners, Ed Sheeran is currently being listened to by approximately 20% of all Spotify users worldwide.
Earlier this month, Ed Sheeran was named as one of Warner Music Group‘s biggest-selling recording artists – in terms of global revenue generation – during the first quarter of 2022.
Warner’s other biggest sellers in the quarter included Michael Bublé, Dua Lipa and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Justin Bieber released his most recent studio album, Justice, in March 2021.
By June that year, it had officially sold in excess of a million sales-equivalent units in the United States, according to RIAA certifications.
In February last year, Bieber became the first ever single-artist to perform a full-length concert that aired live on TikTok.Music Business Worldwide