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Spotify is firing back at Drake’s accusations that the streamer helped Universal Music Group artificially boost Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” calling the allegations “false” and blasting the rapper’s legal action as a “subversion of the normal judicial process.”
The new filing is the first response to a petition filed last month in which Drake accused UMG and Spotify of an illegal “scheme” involving bots, payola and other methods to pump up Lamar’s song — a track that savagely attacked Drake amid an ongoing feud between the two stars.
In a motion filed Friday in Manhattan court, the streaming giant says it has found zero evidence to support the claims of a bot attack, and flatly denies that it struck any deal with UMG to support Lamar’s song.
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“The predicate of Petitioner’s entire request for discovery from Spotify is false,” the company’s lawyers write. “Spotify and UMG have never had any such arrangement.”
Beyond denying the allegations, the filing repeatedly criticizes Drake for going to court in the first place — calling his claims of a conspiracy “far-fetched” and “speculative,” and questioning why Spotify (a “stranger” to the “long-running fued” between Drake, Kendrick and UMG) is even involved.
Spotify also criticized Drake for the way in which he brought his claims to court — not as a full-fledged lawsuit, but as an unusual “pre-action” petition aimed at demanding information. The company accused Drake of using that “extraordinary” procedure because his allegations are too flimsy to pass muster in an actual lawsuit and would have been quickly dismissed.
“What petitioner is seeking to do here … is to bypass the normal pleading requirements … and obtain by way of pre-action discovery that which it would only be entitled to seek were it to survive a motion to dismiss,” Spotify’s lawyers write. “This subversion of the normal judicial process should be rejected.”
A spokesperson for Drake and his legal team did not immediately return a request for comment on Spotify’s filings.
Drake went to court last month, accusing UMG of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal “RICO” statute often used against organized crime. He accused Spotify of participating in the scheme by charging reduced licensing fees in exchange for recommending the song to users. A day later, he filed a similar action in Texas, suggesting that UMG had legally defamed him by releasing a song that “falsely” accused him of being a “sex offender.”
The legal actions represent a remarkable twist in the high-profile beef between the two stars, which saw Drake and Lamar exchange stinging diss tracks over a period of months earlier this year. That a rapper would take such a dispute to court seemed almost unthinkable at the time, and Drake has been ridiculed in some corners of the hip-hop world for doing so.
The actions also represent a stunning rift between Drake and UMG, where the star has spent his entire career — first through signing a deal with Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, which was distributed by Republic Records, then by signing directly to Republic.
UMG has not yet filed a responded to the litigation in court. But in a statement issued at the time, the music giant called Drake’s allegations “offensive and untrue”: “No amount of contrived and absurd legal arguments in this pre-action submission can mask the fact that fans choose the music they want to hear.”
In Friday’s filing, Spotify echoed that criticism — arguing that civil RICO cases are difficult to prove even with ample evidence, and that Drake hardly has any: “The Petition asserts no specific facts of any kind in support of these alleged RICO and deceptive practices violations,” the company wrote. “Instead, it relies exclusively on speculation … or the claims of anonymous individuals on the internet.”
Spotify’s attorneys seemed particularly focused on disputing the idea that swarms of bots had been able to flood the platforms to fraudulently boost Lamar’s track — a hot-button issue in the modern music industry. In an affidavit attached to Friday’s filing, Spotify’s vp of music offered sworn testimony that the company “invests heavily” in efforts to “mitigate the impact of artificial streaming on our platform.”
“When we identify attempted stream manipulation, we take action that may include removing streaming numbers, withholding royalties and charging penalty fees,” David Kaefer wrote in the filing. “Confirmed and suspected artificial streams are also removed from our chart calculations. This helps us to protect royalty payouts for honest, hardworking artists.”
The Weeknd‘s Q4 career moves have proven the pop star has remained dedicated to finishing the year strong before kicking off 2025 with a bang: He performed a one-night-only stadium show in São Paulo, Brazil in September and released three singles that he debuted during the show: “Dancing in the Flames,” the Billboard Hot 100 No. 3 hit “Timeless” with Playboi Carti and “São Paulo,” featuring Anitta. In October, he took over a handful more stadiums in Melbourne and Sydney during his rescheduled Australian tour. And the following month, he announced his sixth studio album Hurry Up Tomorrow will be released on Jan. 24, and he’ll perform another one-night-only stadium show at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl the day after.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, The Weeknd also became the artist with the most songs to hit one billion streams on Spotify, with 24 songs in the Billions Club. And nearly 2,000 of his top listeners on Spotify got to relive those hits during Spotify’s first-ever Billions Club Live concert at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar on Tuesday evening (Dec. 17).
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“It’s a little holiday gift for the OG XO fans supporting me since day one,” he said while blue strobe lights kicked off his 70-minute set. “2024 is almost done. But 2025, we got some new s–t coming out. New album, new tour, new movie. New everything!” His upcoming album Hurry Up Tomorrow, which is the third and final installment of his After Hours / Dawn FM trilogy, will be supported by a psychological thriller film of the same name that will mark the singer’s feature-starring debut.
It’s poetic that the Canadian-Ethiopian superstar (real name Abel Tesfaye) is closing this chapter of his career the same way he started it over a decade ago, with a trilogy of cohesive projects. Outside of his big-picture ideas, he finds clever ways to thread together little details from his entire discography. The popular idiom “this house is not a home,” for example, is a common lyrical theme, which The Weeknd references not only in the 2020 After Hours title track he performed but also dating back to “Twenty Eight” from his 2011 debut mixtape House of Balloons. But for someone as beloved as him, The Weeknd feels right at home on stage even during the remarkably intimate show.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been at a venue like this. Feels like back in the Kiss Land tour or Trilogy tour,” he reflected. “Maybe after the stadium tour, we might go back in time and we might do smaller venues.”
He tapped his frequent collaborator Mike Dean — whom The Weeknd jokingly blamed for his minor coughing fit because he was “hitting that f–king bong all night” — to steer the set “wherever you wanna take it,” before the hip-hop superproducer’s eerie synths introduced Metro Boomin‘s “Creepin,’” featuring The Weeknd and 21 Savage. The Weeknd later summoned his drummer Ricky Lewis to play “Popular,” the platinum-certified hit with Madonna and Carti from his 2023 HBO drama series The Idol. It’s one of two songs from the show to hit one billion Spotify streams, with the other being “One of the Girls” with JENNIE and Lily-Rose Depp. Then, he called on his guitarist Patrick Greenaway to cue the next song — and Greenaway’s scene-stealing shredding summoned “Heartless.” The Weeknd had multiple opportunities to bring out special guests, considering 13 of the 24 songs in the Billions Club are collaborations, but the unprecedented concert felt more suited for his solo victory lap rather than an all-star relay race.
“Oh s–t, this hit a billion?!” he marveled as “Reminder,” from his 2016 album Starboy started playing. The Weeknd warned the crowd of the song’s gunshot background sound during the chorus, a conscious reminder his concertgoers have picked up on from his previous shows. And while this one’s circular stage setup was much simpler than his ornamented stadium show designs, it didn’t stop The Weeknd from making the night memorable: Yellow spotlights flickered as he sang the “I just wanna see you shine ’cause I know you are a stargirl” outro from his and Lana Del Rey‘s “Stargirl Interlude,” and they later twinkled to recreate the grandiose ballroom feel of “Earned It” from the 50 Shades of Grey film. And red strobe lights provoked the sinister aura of his 2015 Hot 100 chart-topper “The Hills” from Beauty Behind the Madness.
He asked if any of his ballads had hit one billion Spotify streams to slow down his set, but the singer was taken aback by the siren-like synth intro of his Gesaffelstein-featuring “I Was Never There” from his 2018 EP My Dear Melancholy, classifying it as more of a “power ballad.” After his 2012 debut single “Wicked Games” (“I know that song didn’t hit a billion, but I felt like I had to do it. It’s necessary, at least one House of Balloons song,” he said matter-of-factly) and “Die For You” — which experienced a TikTok-fueled resurgence six years after its release and produced the Hot 100 No. 1 remix with Ariana Grande — The Weeknd wanted to “pick up the pace” and Daft Punk‘s fuzzy disco-pop production from “I Feel It Coming” instantly got the audience in a groove.
After what felt like the ultimate finisher with “Blinding Lights” — the first song to hit four billion Spotify streams as well as the top Hot 100 song of all time — The Weeknd teased his Hurry Up Tomorrow era by singing a snippet of an unreleased song he’s teased during previous shows, reportedly titled “In Heaven.” “In 2025, everything is fine. In 2025, everything will be fine. I’ll come back for you, XO. But until then, hurry up tomorrow! Hurry up tomorrow! Hurry up tomorrow! Hurry up tomorrow!” he bellowed.
Check out the full set list from The Weeknd’s Spotify Billions Club Live concert below.
“Call Out My Name”
“Moth to a Flame”
“After Hours”
“Lost in the Fire”
“Creepin’”
“Popular”
“Starboy”
“Heartless”
“Reminder”
“Stargirl Interlude”
“One of the Girls”
“The Hills”
“Often”
“I Was Never There”
“Wicked Games”
“Earned It”
“Die For You”
“I Feel It Coming”
“Can’t Feel My Face”
“Save Your Tears”
“Blinding Lights”
Encore:
“Timeless”
“São Paulo”
To close out 2024, Sabrina Carpenter was on countless people’s year-end Spotify Wrapped lists — including her own.
That’s exactly why the 25-year-old pop star didn’t join many of the streaming service’s users in sharing her listening-habit summary on social media this year, she told Vogue Arabia in a new interview published Tuesday (Dec. 10). “When I first saw mine, my initial reaction was, ‘Oh, damn, I can’t post that, because I’m on my own [list],’” she told the publication. “‘It’s a bit conceited.’”
“But then I was like, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m on my list and listening to my own music, because it means I f–k with what I do,” Carpenter added.
The Girl Meets World alum definitely isn’t the only one. In 2024, her smash hit “Espresso” was streamed more than 1.6 billion times on Spotify, making it the app’s most-streamed song of any other upload. Plus, her Billboard 200-topping sixth studio LP Short n’ Sweet was the platform’s third-most popular album, bested only by Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft.
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While on the topic of Spotify Wrapped, Carpenter did reveal which other four artists made her top 5: Dolly Parton, ABBA, Kacey Musgraves and the Bee Gees.
Carpenter is currently on a break from her first-ever arena trek, with the North American leg of the Short n’ Sweet Tour closing in November. The “Please Please Please” singer will get back on the road for a run of European dates in March.
In the meantime, fans can enjoy her new holiday special A Nonsense Christmas, which premiered Dec. 6 on Netflix. Of the project, Carpenter told Vogue Arabia, “It was kind of a s–t show — but in the best possible way. A Christmas s–t show, which is way better than normal ones, because everyone’s festive and dressed up,” she said, revealing that her crew filmed the special in just two days. “You can’t really be mad when everyone is dressed like Christmas. And I’m so lucky that my friends were a part of it, that just made it all the more fun.”
Spotify continued its remarkable run this week by briefly surpassing a $100 billion market capitalization before falling slightly by the close of trading on Friday (Dec. 6). The company’s shares rose 4.5% to $498.63, marking the music streamer’s second-best closing price ever. The best closing price of $502.38 came on Wednesday (Dec. 4) when Spotify reached a new intraday high of $506.47, valuing the Swedish company at approximately $100.8 billion.
The $100 billion threshold arrived the same day Spotify launched its 2024 Wrapped, the personalized, data-driven product that breaks down listeners’ streaming time and ranks their most popular artists and tracks. Wrapped, first launched in 2015, has become both a major media event and an immensely successful product that listeners share incessantly on social media.
At Friday’s closing price, Spotify has gained 165.4% in 2024, making it the only music company to have a triple-digit gain. This improvement is three times higher than that of Live Nation, which has risen 46.1% this year. Cloud Music is close behind with a 44.2% gain year-to-date.
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With a valuation of more than double the next-largest music company, Spotify is a major driver of the 20-stock Billboard Global Music Index, which rose 2.8% to an all-time high of 2,280.51. That brings its year-to-date gain to 48.7%. Ten of the 20 stocks were gainers while nine lost ground and one was unchanged. Radio companies, buoyed by iHeartMedia’s 14% gain, led the way with an average gain of 5.9%. Streaming companies posted a 4.4% average gain. Live music companies were essentially flat. Multi-format companies (record labels, music publishers) fell 2.1% on average.
Most other streaming companies were gainers this week. Tencent Music Entertainment rose 10% to $11.54. Cloud Music increased 9.7% to 129.40 HKD ($16.63). LiveOne jumped 6% to $0.88. Deezer improved 2.9% to 1.37 euros ($1.45). Abu Dhabi-based Anghami fell 6.8% to $0.73.
On the live front, MSG Entertainment improved 1.6% to $36.26 this week. The company announced on Tuesday (Dec. 3) that it spent $25 million repurchasing its Class A common shares due to their price “relative to the company’s long-term growth potential.” Elsewhere, Live Nation fell 1.1% to $140.26 while Sphere Entertainment Co., which announced additional Dead & Company dates this week, fell 5.1% to $40.27.
In other noteworthy stock moves this week, HYBE dropped 3.2% to 214,000 won ($150.15) after news broke that South Korean authorities are investigating chairman Bang Si-hyuk for possible violations of the country’s Capital Markets Act. The move came after a report claimed Bang had a secret agreement with shareholders prior to HYBE’s initial public stock offering that gave him a $285 million profit when the company went public in 2020. HYBE shares fell 6.7% over the two trading days following the news report but recovered more than half its losses later in the week. Other K-pop stocks fell in unison with HYBE. JYP Entertainment dropped 5.2%, YG Entertainment lost 5.8% and SM Entertainment sank 7.5%.
Elsewhere, stocks were mostly up globally. In the United States, the Nasdaq composite rose 3.3% and the S&P 500 gained 1%. In the United Kingdom, the FTSE 100 improved 0.3%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index grew 2.4%. Dragged down by political turmoil, South Korea’s KOSPI composite dropped 1.1%.
If it seems like everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped, the streaming service’s data-driven annual recap of listening habits, it’s because everybody is talking about Spotify Wrapped. That says a lot about its effectiveness and its value to the company.
The streaming platform’s personalized year-end recap is unmissable this time of year. Mashable began prepping its readers back on Nov. 19. A week later, Spotify heightened expectations by advising users to update the Spotify app to the latest, Wrapped-ready version. When Wrapped finally appeared on Wednesday (Dec. 4), there was an onslaught of media coverage. Billboard even got into the Wrapped coverage, revealing Chappell Roan’s top artists and songs on Spotify in 2024 (Ariana Grande and Heart’s “Barracuda,” respectively).
With so much media coverage, some of it is bound to carry a grousing, annoyed tone. “Hate your Spotify Wrapped?” Rolling Stone asked, “You’re not alone.” “Sorry, parents,” The Washington Post lamented, “it’s actually your kids’ Spotify Wrapped.” Vogue turned Wrapped into a frank self-examination in an article titled “I love Spotify Wrapped so much I hate it.” For people whose Spotify Wrapped “suck[ed],” Pocket-lint suggests ways to “fix it” in 2025. The Huffington Post’s compilation of the “funniest” tweets about Wrapped was filled with only mildly humorous complaints.
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In contrast, articles about Wrapped’s peers came and went without anything close to the same level of media hullabaloo. The annual recaps of Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music received basic coverage at mostly tech-oriented publications but didn’t elicit the kind of longwinded pop culture essays that Wrapped conjures up every year. Apple Music Replay received run-of-the-mill articles such as “Apple Music’s yearly recap is finally available in the app” at tech news site The Verge. When TechCrunch covered the launch of Amazon Music’s 2024 Delivered, the headline referred to it as Amazon’s “take on Spotify Wrapped” lest nobody know what they were talking about. YouTube Music Recap launched on Nov. 25 to little media coverage.
For its part, Spotify contributed to the media overload by building a 2024 Wrapped microsite and posting 10 Wrapped-related press releases on launch day. Wrapped itself introduced new innovations in 2024, including a personalized Wrapped podcast featuring two AI hosts and the Your Music Evolution Playlist, a personalized playlist that tracks a user’s different musical interests and phases throughout the year. Wrapped has become such an important event that Spotify hosted a pre-release press briefing that featured talks by executives across the company. As Glenn McDonald, a former Spotify software engineer and author of the book You Have Not Yet Heard Your Favourite Song: How Streaming Changed Music, told Billboard via email, “nothing else they do gets as much marketing/branding energy put into it.”
Wrapped especially shines in the awareness it attracts on social media. At the end of every Wrapped recap, Spotify offers personalized badges that flood X, Instagram and TikTok — the latter two benefitting from integrations announced in November that make it easier to share content. In this way, Wrapped turns its users into “active brand advocates on social media,” as one academic study put it. Or, as another paper phrased it, Spotify turns its users into “free labour” to help market its product. “For Spotify, it is 100% a brand-visibility moment,” says McDonald. “Social virality is the only metric the company cares about. The viral attention does help with user retention and reactivation, but the virality itself is the thing they’re measuring.”
More than an effective marketing ploy, Wrapped has turned into a competitive advantage in a business where standalone music streaming services desperately need one. A company has a competitive advantage when it creates more economic value than its competitors. Economic value is the difference between the perceived value of the product and the costs required to produce the product. Some brands are able to charge a premium because they have succeeded, through the quality of the product and the effectiveness of marketing, in convincing consumers their product is worth more. Food made with better ingredients commands a price premium, for example. Sometimes differences in perception of value come down to marketing. The difference between luxury clothing brands’ prices can be explained by amounts spent on splashy advertisements and celebrity endorsements, not just the cost of materials and labor.
Unlike streaming video-on-demand (SVOD) services, which attract viewers mainly through exclusive programming, music streaming platforms have — for the most part — the same content and must find other avenues to attract and retain customers. Amazon Music Unlimited, for example, is cheaper for members of Amazon Prime. Apple Music benefits from being part of the Apple entertainment ecosystem and Apple’s ownership of music identification app Shazam. YouTube Music gets its subscribers through YouTube, the most popular streaming app in the world. Spotify, a standalone company, can’t match Amazon’s low price, Apple’s omnipresence or YouTube’s ubiquity.
Instead, Spotify competes on product features it develops in-house. Launched in 2015, Discover Weekly, a personalized playlist filled with recently released tracks, was so popular that people who streamed their Discover Weekly playlists streamed twice as much as people who didn’t. A product that popular helps give Spotify an advantage over its larger competitors. Discover Weekly was launched the same year Apple launched Apple Music. Although many onlookers expected Apple would crush Spotify, Spotify has consistently maintained a sizable lead in market share, and innovation played an important role in holding off behemoths like Apple and Amazon. As Will Page, former Spotify chief economist, put it in his 2021 book Pivot, Discover Weekly “create[d] a moat to protect Spotify’s castle.”
Wrapped follows in Discover Weekly’s footsteps as a moat-building product innovation. The key is Spotify’s ability to get its listeners to talk about Wrapped. One study found that Spotify Wrapped was more effective than Apple Music Replay in users’ willingness to create user-generated content (i.e. share Wrapped on social media). That’s gold in a business where consumers can choose between a number of fairly identical substitutes with similar features. Anything that increases engagement and prevents users from leaving for Apple, Amazon or YouTube is valuable. In that sense, developing a product that becomes a part of the cultural zeitgeist, like Wrapped, is perhaps the biggest competitive advantage a streaming service can have.
There’s nothing artificial about Mariah Carey, who has addressed rumors that her 2024 Spotify Wrapped video message to fans was AI-generated. “Bad lighting and a red lip have you all thinking this is AI??” the vocalist tweeted Thursday (Dec. 5), reposting the video in question from a fan account on X. “There’s a reason I’m […]
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Spotify Wrapped is back for 2024 and this year’s wrap-up adds some interesting new genres, graphic flourishes, and month-to-month breakdowns of your listening habits. For the eighth year in a row, Drake is listed as the most-listened-to rapper in both the United States and the world.
In some circles, it’s been said that Drake and his audio war with Kendrick Lamar put a tarnish on the Canadian superstar’s musical legacy. However, that hasn’t put a dent into Drizzy’s streaming numbers as evidenced by the latest Spotify Wrapped roundup.
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In the United States, Taylor Swift is just one slot ahead of Drake as the most-listened-to artist, which makes all the sense in the world given her massive popularity and supportive fanbase. With Swift and Drake taking spots one and two, the rest of the United States’ top 10 list includes in order Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Kanye West, Future, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and Metro Boomin.
On the domestic front, the inclusion of Future, Metro Boomin, and Kendrick Lamar has a tipping point in the explosive “Like That” track that ignited the war of words between Drake and K-Dot and culminated in the chart-topping “Not Like Us” that boosted the profile of the Compton, Calif. star.
On the global front, the top artist is Taylor Swift once more, with The Weeknd, a rival of The Boy, taking the second slot with Bad Bunny at #3, Drake at #4, and Billie Eilish at #5.
As it stands, Drake can once again claim superiority as the top rapper in the States and the OVO honcho may be motivated to gain ground on the global front despite having a largely quiet 2024. All eyes will be on October’s Very Own for sure in the following year.
Source: Spotify
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Photo: Getty
HipHopWired Featured Video
Spotify Wrapped is back for 2024 and this year’s wrap-up adds some interesting new genres, graphic flourishes, and month-to-month breakdowns of your listening habits. For the eighth year in a row, Drake is listed as the most-listened-to rapper in both the United States and the world.
In some circles, it’s been said that Drake and his audio war with Kendrick Lamar put a tarnish on the Canadian superstar’s musical legacy. However, that hasn’t put a dent into Drizzy’s streaming numbers as evidenced by the latest Spotify Wrapped roundup.
Related Stories
In the United States, Taylor Swift is just one slot ahead of Drake as the most-listened-to artist, which makes all the sense in the world given her massive popularity and supportive fanbase. With Swift and Drake taking spots one and two, the rest of the United States’ top 10 list includes in order Zach Bryan, Morgan Wallen, Kanye West, Future, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, and Metro Boomin.
On the domestic front, the inclusion of Future, Metro Boomin, and Kendrick Lamar has a tipping point in the explosive “Like That” track that ignited the war of words between Drake and K-Dot and culminated in the chart-topping “Not Like Us” that boosted the profile of the Compton, Calif. star.
On the global front, the top artist is Taylor Swift once more, with The Weeknd, a rival of The Boy, taking the second slot with Bad Bunny at #3, Drake at #4, and Billie Eilish at #5.
As it stands, Drake can once again claim superiority as the top rapper in the States and the OVO honcho may be motivated to gain ground on the global front despite having a largely quiet 2024. All eyes will be on October’s Very Own for sure in the following year.
Source: Spotify
—
Photo: Getty
Chappell Roan was on countless people’s 2024 Spotify Wrapped roundups, but who was on hers?
On Wednesday (Dec. 4), the 26-year-old pop star revealed which artists were in her top five at the close of the year, sharing an old photo of herself posing next to a car decked out in camo-print decals on Instagram and writing, “this pic kind of insane.”
“Ps,” she added. “My Spotify wrapped most listened to artists were 1. Ariana [Grande] 2. Charli [XCX] 3. Heart 4. Justice 5. Kacey Musgraves.”
“Top song was barracuda ofc,” Roan added, referencing her third-most-streamed artist’s 1977 hit.
The Missouri native’s post comes on the same day Spotify unveiled its annual Wrapped feature, allowing users to see which artists and songs they streamed the most over the course of 2024 through specially curated playlists and shareable data cards. The platform also revealed its most-streamed artists overall — Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish, in that order — as well as its most popular songs of the year.
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Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” garnered the most listens globally on Spotify this year, followed by Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.” In the U.S., however, Roan scored the sixth-most streamed song with breakthrough single “Good Luck, Babe!” — which surpassed one billion streams just a few days prior to Wrapped arriving — bested only by “Espresso,” Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” Post Malone and Morgan Wallen’s “I Had Some Help” and Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” nationally.
The “Hot to Go” singer’s debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, was also the fifth-most streamed album in the U.S. Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology was No. 1 at home, followed by Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet and Noah Kahan’s Stick Season.
Roan has previously expressed her fandom of Grande, calling herself an “Arianator” in an August livestream and adding that she was “so excited” to see Wicked. She also gave Charli a shout-out in her September Rolling Stone cover story, naming the “Von Dutch” artist as one of several female stars who had reached out to her with support during the emotional low-points of her rise to fame, along with Katy Perry, Lorde, Muna, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and more.
As we look toward 2025, ’tis the season to look back at your 2024 music listening habits with Spotify Wrapped, the annual breakdown of how you’ve been individually listening to music throughout the year.
While Spotify Wrapped is available for anyone with an account, sometimes, it can be hard to find. Don’t worry, though, Billboard‘s got your back. As usual, the 2024 Spotify Wrapped will be Spotify mobile app, which you can download at Spotify.com/Wrapped. Make sure you have the latest version, which you’ll need to access Wrapped. Just like last year, the platform is making Wrapped available via desktop and mobile, also at Spotify.com/Wrapped.
Once you’ve logged in, your personalized look back at 2024 should appear at the top of your home screen. After watching and learning about your listening habits throughout the year, you’ll be able to share your Wrapped results to social media to show off to your friends.
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This year’s edition rolled out on Wednesday morning (Dec. 4) and, no surprise, Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter were among the artists who dominated on the streaming service in 2024. Swift closed out her huge year as 2024’s most-streamed artist, generating over 26.6 billion streams globally — marking two straight years of her topping the tally — with The Weeknd coming in second among artists, followed by Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish.
To celebrate Swift’s two-fer, Spotify rolled out a special Wrapped badge on her profile as well as custom animations corresponding to her music, including sparkles to match Fearless (Taylor’s Version), seagulls for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and more. Swift also had Spotify’s top-streamed album of the year with her 15-week Billboard 200-topper The Tortured Poets Department.
Second place on the albums list was Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, followed by Carpenter’s, Short n’ Sweet, Karol G’s MAÑANA SERÁ BONITO and Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine. All five of the app’s top albums spent time at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. In addition, Carpenter’s “Espresso” snagged the most listens globally in 2024, racking up more than 1.6 billion streams. Just behind was Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.”