Many songs have surpassed 3 billion streams on Spotify, including hits like The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights", Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You," Post Malone's "rockstar," Tones And I's "Dance Monkey," and Imagine Dragons' "Believer," with numerous tracks from artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Drake also joining this elite group, forming a "3 Billion Club" of the platform's most popular songs.
Uploaded almost six years ago, Blinding Lights took the crown from Shape of You by Ed Sheeran on 31 December 2022, which currently has 4.53 billion streams and held the top position for a record 1,928 days (over five years!) Today, there are over 30 tracks with over 3 billion streams!
A billion streams on Spotify typically generates around three to $5 million dollars in gross revenue but how much actually reaches the artist depends on several factors.
Bad Bunny is once again Spotify's Global Top Artist
For the fourth time, after claiming the title in 2020, 2021, and 2022, our users have crowned Bad Bunny Spotify's top artist globally, with 19.8 billion streams this year.
The most streamed song of all-time on Spotify is Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, with 5,226,555,336 streams as of January 8, 2026. Other top tracks include Shape Of You, Sweater Weather, Starboy, As It Was, and many more.
“Gangnam Style” by South Korean musician PSY became the first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views. By the end of 2012, the song had topped music charts in more than 30 countries around the world. #song4theweekend #PSY #GangnamStyle #musichistory #music.
1. Taylor Swift
Songs released in 2015 took an average of 2,621 days (7.2 years) to hit one billion streams, while tracks from 2020 needed just 1,250 days (3.4 years). By 2024, that figure had dropped dramatically to 180 days (0.5 years).
To estimate your streaming royalties, use a simple formula: Royalties = Number of Streams × Average Payout Rate. For example, if you have 500,000 streams on Spotify and the average payout is $0.004 per stream, your estimated royalties would be: 500,000 × $0.004 = $2,000.
As of early January 2026, The Weeknd is generally considered #1 on Spotify for monthly listeners, but Taylor Swift is the most-streamed artist in Spotify's history and often leads overall popularity, with Bruno Mars recently hitting a historic 150 million monthly listeners. The #1 spot can change daily, but The Weeknd currently leads in recent monthly listeners, while Bad Bunny remains a top contender, and Taylor Swift dominates overall historical streams.
This is a crazy milestone making Blinding Lights the first song in history to reach 5 billion streams on Spotify. This makes the Weeknd the first artist to have a song at 5 billion streams as well.
Over the course of Elvis' life, he achieved some of the highest accolades in music and film. It is estimated that more than one billion Elvis records have been sold worldwide, more than anyone in record industry history.
'As It Was' by Harry Styles surpassed 4 billion streams on Spotify, becoming his first song to reach this milestone. It is now the fourth most-streamed song in Spotify history and holds the record as the fastest song to reach 4 billion streams.
Contrary to what you might have heard, Spotify does not pay artist royalties according to a per-play or per-stream rate; the royalty payments that artists receive might vary according to differences in how their music is streamed or the agreements they have with labels or distributors.
Taylor Swift becomes the FIRST artist in history to surpass 100 BILLION SOLO streams on Spotify! the queen of the music industry continues to make history! #TaylorSwift #Taylor #Swift.
Introduced as part of Spotify's revamped royalty model, the 1,000-stream threshold means tracks must reach at least that number of annual streams before they begin generating recorded-music royalties.
One notable example is the award -winning musician Wizkid who is now officially the most streamed artiste on Spotify. Based on Spotify's streaming rate of $0.003 per stream, Wizkid's 5.5 billion streams on the platform would have earned him a staggering $24 million.
He pays $11 a month for the premium version so he can listen to any song at any time. In 2024, Spotify plans to stop paying artists who do not make 1000 streams yearly. This affects small artists who are just trying to start.
The answer is that when people are in the top 0.005% of all the listeners globally, they have listened to that song or artist more than 99.995% of all other Spotify users. Additionally, many users also ranked under the top 0.001% of all the listeners globally when they shared their top artists and songs.
In case you didn't already know it, facts and figures put together by Forbes show that Daniel Ek, Spotify's CEO and founder is currently worth $7.3 billion. That's richer than their musical top three of Taylor Swift, Rihanna and Jay-Z combined. Richer, therefore, than any music artist in history.
The #1 richest YouTuber in the world is MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), consistently topping lists with an estimated net worth often cited over $500 million, potentially reaching $1 billion, driven by viral content, massive giveaways, and successful business ventures like Feastables and MrBeast Burger, making him the highest-earning creator globally.
The number one streamed song of all time, primarily on Spotify, is "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd, having surpassed 5 billion streams and holding the top spot over other massive hits like Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" and The Weeknd's "Starboy".
The Minecraft community has crushed one trillion views on YouTube. Celebrate this huge milestone with a look back at some of the biggest moments in Minecraft history.