The rapper, who just released his latest smash record Views late last month, hit the new record despite the fact that his new album was an Apple Music exclusive until this past weekend — one which also set the all time record for most plays in a debut week.
Still, Bieber is no slouch with more than 3.176 billion individual plays compared to Drake’s 3.21 billion. Ed Sheeran comes in third on the most-streamed list, with just over two billion plays. Top women on the list include Ariana Grande and Rihanna, who have each amassed around 1.5 billion plays.
Spotify has been racking up massive numbers for big pop artists for years, with over twenty musicians that have now broken the billion-play mark on the service. And this year should see several other additions to that club, with artists like Pitbull and Selena Gomez around 50 million plays away from the billion club.
As the service continues to build on its already industry-topping subscriber base, play counts will probably only continue to skyrocket, but it remains to be seen how the increasing crop of exclusive releases to services like Apple Music and Tidal will affect Spotify’s play counts for particular musicians long term. So far, the competition doesn’t seem to have hurt the service much, especially given that most major releases arrive at Spotify shortly after they debut on other streaming sites.
Updated on 05-18-2016 by Parker Hall: Updated to reflect the fact that Drake’s Views is now available on Spotify.
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