Last month, we learned that Rihanna was Spotify’s most streamed female artist of 2017; this achievement without her even dropping a new album.
But now we’ve learned that, according to Variety, across all platforms and gender notwithstanding, Drake was the most streamed artist of 2017 overall. His What A Time to Be Alive collaborator Future took the no. 2 spot.
Drizzy nabbed 6 billion listens; and this is the second year in a row that he’s broke that mark in one year. (He is the only artist to have more than 6 billion in one year.)
Future follows with 4.2 billion streams.
Streaming continues to dominate as the leading method for audio consumption. As album sales, song sales, and physical sales continue to decline (at 14.6%, 23.2%, and 7%, respectively), streaming in 2017 saw a 50.3% increase bringing it to a record 377 billion listens. To compare, 2016 only saw 250 billion.