On June 29, 2026 the most streamed track on Spotify in the United States was "Choosin' Texas" by Ella Langley with around million streams by U.S. users. "stupid song" by Olivia Rodrigo came second, as it reached million streams on Spotify in the U.S. that day.
Artists and streaming: a double-edged sword
Whilst the ranking of most streamed songs changes each week, artists to frequently make the top five include chart-toppers Post Malone and Drake. In 2018, Drake’s album ‘Scorpion’ was streamed over six billion times in the U.S. alone and Post Malone’s ‘Beerbongs & Bentleys’ followed closely behind.
Having their music on Spotify can be a lucrative opportunity for popular music artists, allowing them to earn royalties per every song streamed. This is an opportunity which was not available to musicians who made a name for themselves before music streaming became a possibility and is just one of the many ways in which the music industry has changed over the last few decades.
On a less positive note, artists have to accumulate hundreds of thousands of streams before they make any real money from Spotify. The majority of digital music revenue in the U.S. derived from streaming, but royalties paid to artists by Spotify are usually well below the one cent mark per stream. Spotify has frequently rebuffed accusations that its royalty payments structure is unfair, claiming that a better understanding of their business model was needed in order to appreciate how the payments work. However, as is often the case with anything that sounds too good to be true, featuring on Spotify is not enough for most artists to make a living, regardless of the amount of exposure the platform gives them.
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