Ed Sheeran’s global popularity has been highlighted once again being named Spotify’s most streamed artist for 2017. The English singer-songwriter had the most streamed song and most streamed album for the year.
The song to be streamed the most was, unsurprisingly, Shape of You and the album in which it came from, Divide, was also the most streamed album. Shape of You is now the most popular song of all time on Spotify having been streamed 1.4 billion times. Divide was also prominent with 3.4 billion streams.
Overall, Sheeran had a total of 6.3 billion streams of his tracks beating out both Drake and the Weeknd to take out the most streamed male artist of the year.
Shape of You was a massive beneficiary of the remix of Luis Fonsi’s Depsacito that included Justin Bieber. The song reached number one in many countries throughout 2017 and both held the number one spot on Spotify, the first for a Latin track. Both the original and remix featured in the top 5 most streamed songs of 2017 at number two and three.
The top five was rounded out by Coldplay and the Chainsmokers collaboration in ‘Something Just Like This’ and ‘I’m The One’ by DJ Khaled featuring Justin Bieber, Chance the Rapper, Quavo and Lil Wayne.
The most streamed band for 2017 was Coldplay in front of Imagine Dragons and Maroon 5. These were closely followed by Linkin Park and Migos.
In the female artist category, it was Rhianna who had the most streams in 2017. The R&B pop star beat out the likes of Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez and closely followed by Ariana Grande and Sia. Rhianna’s feat is made even more incredible by the fact that she did not release an album this year.
The biggest story in the women’s category is the breakout year had by Dua Lipa, named the most streamed women in the UK. It has been increasingly hard for young artists to break onto the scene making Lipa, 22, an impressive talent.
The young UK singer has been described as independent and cool and most notably in control of her sexuality. It is likely that this has played a large role in connecting and relating to many of the adolescent and young female listeners.
Her self-titled album has managed to sell 1.2 million copies to date since its release in June, 2017. The number one song from the album, New Rules, has been a viral success ranking among the top trending videos on YouTube with 746 million views.