Taylor Swift Named Spotify’s Top-Streamed Artist of 2023
In 2023, Taylor Swift has continued to dominate the music industry, and earlier this week she added another major achievement to her list of accolades. Spotify announced that Swift was named the top-streamed artist of the year, racking up an incredible 26.1 billion streams globally on the service since January 1.
This comes as no surprise given the ongoing success of her late-2022 album, “Midnights,” as well as the chart-topping re-recordings of her albums “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” and “1989 (Taylor’s Version).” The latter of which amassed an impressive 375.49 million on-demand official streams in its first week.
Swift’s performance on Spotify this year surpasses any artist in the platform’s history, which launched 15 years ago. Her 26.1 billion streams amount to approximately $97 million in recorded music royalties. And with the year not even over, it’s estimated that her total streams through December will reach 27.2 billion, resulting in recorded music royalties of $101 million from Spotify alone, with publishing revenue bringing the total to about $131 million.
When considering on-demand streams across all platforms, including Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music, Swift’s catalog is estimated to have totaled 38.3 billion streams by the end of the year. This amounts to a total of about $160 million in recorded royalties, and with publishing included, Swift’s total on-demand streaming revenue gets close to $200 million.
It’s worth noting that Swift retains master rights to all of her music, including re-recorded versions of her albums, as part of her contract with Universal Music Group and Republic Records. This move has proven to be lucrative for Swift, with her “Taylor’s Versions” consistently outperforming the originals on streaming platforms.
This success is a stark contrast to Swift’s decision to pull her catalog from Spotify less than a decade ago, calling it a “grand experiment.”
The news of Swift’s achievement on Spotify comes as further proof of her unmatched success and influence in the music industry.