Rather than Spotify’s monthly listeners, we take a look at the all-time streams of every track from artists’ catalogues.

Monthly listeners are a great way to see which artists are currently popular on the streaming service, whereas this list is a great way to see the most popular artists in the last decade (since streaming’s growth). Find more Spotify top tens such as the most-streamed tracks of 2021, most-streamed songs of the summer, most-streamed songs in a single day and the most-streamed female artists by monthly listeners.

An artist’s all-time streams aren’t shared by Spotify with the public, so this data comes from ChartMasters. Updated daily, ChartMasters explain their methodology and admit the full list of 1,000 artists may not be 100% accurate. Their data is “based on streams from tracks available inside their personal page’s sections Albums, Singles and Compilations. They are combined together and defined as “Lead streams”.” Appears on streams such as featured tracks are not counted towards lead streams or the ranking, but this number is listed.

First up is Drake, with a whopping 46 billion streams.

1. Drake

  • Lead streams: 46,697,543,955
  • Featured streams: 18,001,099,588
  • Number of tracks: 248
The number two most played Spotify artist

2. Bad Bunny

  • Lead streams: 35,843,162,498
  • Featured streams: 4,620,978,012
  • Number of tracks: 164

3. Ed Sheeran

  • Lead streams: 35,801,925,406
  • Featured streams: 2,577,800,261
  • Number of tracks: 230
The number four most played Spotify artist

4. The Weeknd

  • Lead streams: 31,588,739,684
  • Featured streams: 3,963,254,649
  • Number of tracks: 180

5. Ariana Grande

  • Lead streams: 30,689,233,907
  • Featured streams: 1,964,296,072
  • Number of tracks: 181

6. Justin Bieber

  • Lead streams: 30,250,265,777
  • Featured streams: 10,588,515,720
  • Number of tracks: 224

7. Taylor Swift

  • Lead streams: 28,852,695,444
  • Featured streams: 395,228,397
  • Number of tracks: 320

8. Eminem

  • Lead streams: 28,368,411,475
  • Featured streams: 3,977,418,440
  • Number of tracks: 279

9. Post Malone

  • Lead streams: 27,852,251,588
  • Featured streams: 2,331,533,785
  • Number of tracks: 83
The number ten most played Spotify artist

10. BTS

  • Lead streams: 25,546,119,271
  • Featured streams: 199,545,522
  • Number of tracks: 253

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