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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
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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.”
This year’s Spotify Wrapped rolled out Wednesday morning (Dec. 4), revealing that Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter and more dominated the streaming service in 2024.
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The “Fortnight” singer closes out a banner year as 2024’s most-streamed artist, generating more than 26.6 billion streams globally. In second place among artists was The Weeknd, followed in order by Bad Bunny, Drake and Billie Eilish.
To celebrate Swift’s achievement — which makes her Spotify’s most-streamed artist for two years in a row — the platform has implemented a special Wrapped badge on her profile as well as introduced custom animations corresponding with her music, including sparkles to match Fearless (Taylor’s Version), seagulls for 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and more.
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The 14-time Grammy winner also had Spotify’s top-streamed album of the year with 15-week Billboard 200-topper The Tortured Poets Department, which was also Apple Music’s biggest album of 2024. On Spotify, the second-place album was Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft, followed respectively by the “Please Please Please” singer’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 — and all five of them, it’s worth celebrating, were turned in by female artists.
As for most-streamed songs, Carpenter’s “Espresso” garnered the most listens globally in 2024, racking up more than 1.6 billion streams. Behind it came Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” FloyyMenor and Cris Mj’s “Gata Only” and Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control.”
Plus, Spotify shared its most-streamed podcast this year — The Joe Rogan Experience — and most-listened audio book, which was Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Like in years past, Spotify Wrapped is also now allowing individual users to view their own top-listened artists and songs via shareable data cards. In 2024, they can access “Musical Evolution” features as well, showing how their distinct moods and tastes changed over that past 11 months with Spotify-generated descriptors and a personalized playlist.
Also new is a “Longest Listening Streak” feature that accompanies users’ favorite artists of the year. A returning favorite is the “Top Listeners” feature, revealing which percentage of listeners fans were in for their favorite artists — and the most loyal ones will receive special videos from stars such as Peso Pluma, ROSÉ, Billie Eilish, Usher, Sabrina Carpenter, Karol G and more.
Chappell Roan is celebrating a major milestone on Spotify.
On Friday (Nov. 29), the 26-year-old pop star shared on social media that her breakout hit “Good Luck, Babe!” has officially surpassed one billion streams on the platform.
“good luck babe hitting a billion streams on Spotify is cuckoo loco,” Roan wrote on Instagram, posting a pair of photos of herself rocking a Joan Jett T-shirt. “All I have to say is thank you.”
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Among those joining the celebration in the comments section were fellow musical artists Olivia Rodrigo, SZA and Brandi Carlile. “Yessss,” Rodrigo wrote. SZA chimed in with, “Yeeaaaa!!!! Never been more proud to contribute 500 streams.” Carlile simply remarked, “It kinda rules.”
“Good Luck, Babe!” is featured on Roan’s debut album, Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, which dropped in September 2023. The track, written in collaboration with Daniel Nigro and Justin Tranter, peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned Roan her first No. 1 on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart in September.
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Roan reflected on the journey behind “Good Luck, Babe!” in an interview with Rolling Stone. “I just wanted to write a big anthemic pop song,” she said. “The song was a b—- to write,” the singer-songwriter added, explaining that it’s “about wishing good luck to someone who’s denying fate.”
This year has been a whirlwind for Roan. She’s garnered six Grammy nominations for 2025, including best new artist. Her Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is nominated for both album of the year and best pop vocal album, while “Good Luck, Babe!” earned nods for song of the year, record of the year and best pop solo performance.
The Spotify news arrives just days after Franz Ferdinand gave their own take on “Good Luck, Babe!” during a BBC Radio 2 performance. “It’s just an amazing song by an incredible artist,” lead singer Alex Kapranos said. “Some artists have a moment, and it’s often divisive. But I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love Chappell. This song is incredible, and we’re thrilled to play it.”
Check out Roan’s celebratory Instagram post about reaching one billion streams on Spotify here.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has responded to allegations by UMG artist Drake that it conspired with Spotify to artificially boost the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” in a blockbuster legal filing on Monday (Nov. 25). “The suggestion that UMG would do anything to undermine any of its artists is offensive and untrue,” to […]