These Were the Top Songs, Artists, Playlists, and Podcasts on Spotify of 2019
As 2019 draws to a close, Spotify has published lists of the most popular songs, artists, playlists and podcasts for this year.
This year, Post Malone claimed the spot of most-streamed artist with over 6.5 billion streams from fans around the globe. It’s the rapper-singer-songwriter’s first time topping Spotify’s "Wrapped" list, and he did it just 12 weeks after dropping his album Hollywood’s Bleeding (which also happens to be the second most-streamed album globally this year). His collaboration with Swae Lee on “Sunflower” from Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse rounded out the top three most-streamed songs of the year, which gives the artist a spot in each of our three major music categories (top artists, top songs, and top albums).
The second-most-streamed artist of the year is 17-year-old singer-songwriter and first time Grammy nominee Billie Eilish. In this year alone, she dropped her album WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? and surpassed 6 billion streams. The album has proven to be the top-streamed release of 2019, marking a milestone—Billie is the first female artist to have her album top the Wrapped most-streamed album category. Her dark staccato hit “bad guy” also ranks as the second-most-streamed song of the year.
Finally, Ariana Grande released her popular album thank u, next in February, propelling her to number three on Spotify’s list of most-streamed-artists globally. Her song “7 rings” was also in the top five most streamed this year, giving Ariana a strong two years in the top 10 of Spotify’s Wrapped list. Listeners also showed Taylor Swift lots of love, making her the year’s third top-streamed female artist after her album Lover generated popular tracks like “ME!” and “You Need to Calm Down.”
When it comes to the most-streamed female artist of the decade, Ariana once again takes the cake. Only tears of joy left to cry for this one. (And the top male artist? Last year’s Scorpion king, Drake.)
The year’s top song comes from the duo that took the Northern Hemisphere’s summer by storm: “Señorita” by Shawn Mendes and Camilla Cabello saw more than 1 billion streams. After “Señorita,” “bad guy,” “Sunflower,” and “7 rings,” the year’s fifth-most-streamed track came from Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. They took their horse all the way to the front with “Old Town Road – Remix.”
This year was also a big one for podcast growth on Spotify. There are now more than 500,000 podcast titles available, and Spotify says its podcast audience has grown by more than 50% since the start of the year. The company also saw a 39% increase in podcast hours consumed by listeners quarter over quarter. People are tuning in the most to Spotify Original The Joe Budden Podcast with Rory and Mal, followed by My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark and Germany’s Gemischtes Hack. The most-streamed podcast genre of 2019 was comedy.
You can access Spotify's full "Wrapped" lists here.