Spotify's Billions Club tracks the world's most popular songs, but dozens of greats are nowhere to be found. From TikTok to TV soundtracks, we explore the forces shaping pop’s new canon
No Dylan but loads of Coldplay! What the songs with a billion streams on Spotify tell us about music taste today
A catchy song about alienation and longing, Freaks was released in 2013 and became a raucous highlight of their live shows but didn’t trouble the wider world until 2021, when it was discovered, out of the blue, by TikTok users. Itsstreams kept going up and up and up, until last March it passed a remarkable milestone.
What a strange impression of pop’s history you would glean from the Billions Club. Madonna, for example, would exist only as the second featured artist on the Weeknd’s Popular; Stevie Wonder as no more than a Coolio sample; and Bob Dylan as simply the writer of an Adele hit. Beyoncé and Jackson would appear less significant than the Swedish singer; Radiohead and REM would mean less to the evolution of rock than Måneskin, Italy’s winners of the 2021 Eurovision.
But younger listeners process the past in chaotic ways, scrambling chronology and context. Rock is surprisingly enduring, from AC/DC to nu-metal; turn-of-the-millennium pop-rock hits such as Smash Mouth’s All Star and Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle sit alongside uncharacteristic US breakthroughs from Radiohead and Blur .
Most artists cannot make a living from streaming and Spotify’s publicly visible tally of their streaming numbers can be dispiriting. For members of the streaming economy’s underpaid middle class, a billion-streamer is therefore akin to a winning lottery ticket. The virality of Surf Curse’s Freaks led to their first major-label deal and a financial windfall.
by TV and movie syncs, another key driver of virality. Neither Kate Bush nor the Clash would be in the Billions Club without Stranger Things. Florence + the Machine’s Dog Days Are Over owes its place to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and reruns of Friends helped make With or Without You U2’s solitary entry.
SPOTIFY BILLIONS CLUB MUSIC TRENDS STREAMING DATA POPULARITY CANON
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