What 20 Years of Spotify Data Reveals About Our Listeners
All data tells a story, and in our case, that story is written by you. To celebrate 20 years of Spotify, we’re sharing bite‑sized moments that capture how the world listens, discovers, and connects.
Check back each day as we build out the full story.
Day 1
“Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd is the most streamed song of all time on Spotify.
For the first time, we’ve unveiled the most streamed artists, albums, songs, podcasts, and audiobooks to date. Check out the full lists here.
Day 2
Since the beginning, fans have streamed over 1.2 trillion hours of audio on Spotify. That’s enough time for Artemis II to travel around the Moon and back over 5 billion times.
Day 3
Do listening habits fall along generational lines? We’ll let your streaming be the judge of that…
-
- Musical Geniuses: 18-24-year-olds win the award for streaming the most minutes of music in 2025
- Literary Leaders: 25-34-year-olds win the award for streaming the most minutes of audiobooks in 2025
- Information Junkies: 35-44-year-olds win the award for streaming the most minutes of podcasts in 2025
Day 4
One word to describe Spotify listeners over the years? Chill.
-
- “Chill” is the most streamed mood on Spotify with 4.4 trillion all-time streams.
- It’s followed by moods like “relaxing” (No. 2), “nostalgia” (No. 7), “heartbroken” (No. 5), “love” (No. 16), and “happy” (No. 22).
Day 5
Out of every word in the world, one four-letter-word has stood the test of time for Spotify fans: “Love” is the most searched word on Spotify across all languages, with 4.3 billion searches since December 2018.
Note: December 2018 is when Spotify began counting search data.
Day 6
The greatest Christmas gift of all? 11 billion streams of music.
We’ve had a lot of big music streaming days over the years, but one stands out: December 24, 2025 was the biggest ever day for global music streams, with over 11B streams.
Day 7
Let’s take it back to 2016. Back to Drake, the Mannequin challenge, and the first year for any song to hit 1 billion streams on Spotify…
How it started:
How it’s going:
-
- As of April 29, 2026, there are over 1,200 total songs in Spotify’s Billions Club.
- The fastest to ever do it was “Die With A Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars—which hit 1 billion in 96 days on November 20, 2024.
Day 8
Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (1977) has over 8.3 billion all-time streams on Spotify, 49 years after its original release. It’s also the oldest album in Spotify’s all-time top 100 albums.
Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982) and Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991) follow in second and third place.
Day 9
From singing in the shower to surviving the workday, Spotify listeners have built playlists for just about every moment of life.
Here’s which tracks have been added the most to daily routine playlists:
-
- “Singing in the shower” playlists: “Shower” by Becky G, “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction, and “Wannabe” by Spice Girls
- “Cleaning” playlists: “Shut Up and Dance” by WALK THE MOON, “No Scrubs” by TLC, and “Toxic” by Britney Spears
- “Work sucks” playlists: “All The Small Things” by blink-182, “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton, and “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” by Fall Out Boy
- “TGIF” playlists: “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” by Katy Perry, “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull and Ne-Yo, and “Closer” by The Chainsmokers and Halsey
Day 10
Through the good times and the bad, the break-ups and the make-ups, these tracks on Spotify have been there for the fans throughout it all:
-
- Top “breakup” song of all time: Olivia Rodrigo – “traitor” (131K playlists)
- Top “love” song of all time: Arctic Monkeys – “I Wanna Be Yours” (2.7M playlists)
- Top “happy” song of all time: Pharrell Williams – “Happy” (675K playlists)
- Top “sad” song of all time: Billie Eilish, Khalid – “lovely (with Khalid)” (2.4M playlists)
Day 11
The treasured art form of playlisting on Spotify goes all the way back to 2008—with millions of fans expressing themselves through music for the past two decades.
Since then, Spotify listeners have created over 9.67 billion playlists across all time.
Day 12
According to a generation of Spotify listeners, July is the happiest month for music and January is the saddest.
Wondering what else changes with the seasons?
-
- EDM peaks in June
- Country peaks in summer
- R&B peaks in February (Valentine’s Day)
- Classical peaks in winter
Day 13
Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” (1969) peaked on Spotify in 2024, 55 years after release.
Here are some of the other biggest comeback stories in Spotify history—songs that found their second wind on Spotify decades after their initial release:
-
- Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” (1971) peaked in 2024—53 years after release.
- Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” (1978) had a comeback in 2019—following the Bohemian Rhapsody film—41 years later.
- Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)“ (1985) surged in 2022—following Stranger Things—37 years later.
- The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” (1998) peaked in 2025—27 years after release.
Day 14
Renegades: Born in the USA is one of the fastest podcast shows to go global on Spotify, hitting global scale just a single day after release (February 22, 2021).
The Joe Rogan Experience is the most binge-listened podcast on Spotify—2.7 million people have listened to 20 or more episodes in a single calendar month.
Day 15
Bad Bunny and J Balvin—two of Spotify’s most-streamed artists of all time—have helped make music performed in Spanish grow more than any other language in Spotify history.
-
- Fun fact: Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee, and Justin Bieber all have something to do with that. Their massive hit “Despacito” played a large role in driving the breakout surge in streams of music in Spanish in 2017.
Day 16
If music was a passport, Spotify listeners would have traveled to nearly every country in the world. In 2026, over half of all Spotify streams came from outside an artist’s home country.
Over the past decade, Afrobeats has played a large role in that—becoming one of the fastest growing genres on Spotify outside its home countries. The genre saw a 349x spike between 2014 and 2025.
In 2023, “Calm Down (with Selena Gomez)” by Rema became the first Nigerian artist-led Afrobeats song to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify.
Day 17
Shout out to the stans who made K-Pop the fastest growing genre in Spotify history—carrying it around the world and back. Fans took K-Pop from the No. 579 genre in 2008 to the top 50 in 2026—one of the most dramatic genre rises in Spotify history.
In 2008, almost no one outside South Korea had heard K-Pop on Spotify. Now, it’s a global phenomenon with over 61 billion streams from listeners outside South Korea in 2025 alone.
Day 18
Spotify’s viral daylist feature made its way into listeners’ hearts in 2023 with quirky descriptors that update based on time of day. Since then, listeners have streamed the personalized playlist for over 1.17 billion hours. Some of the most popular descriptors of all time include:
-
- dad rock air guitar
- happy indie surf crush
- classic cinema vibes film feels
- afro house tulum
- indie sleaze fluorescent
- happy folk stomp and holler
Day 19
From 80s comebacks to string quartet covers, some of the most unforgettable TV moments haven’t just lived on our screens— they’ve become the soundtracks to our lives.
-
- Stranger Things is the most streamed Netflix show playlist on Spotify with 765M all-time streams, followed closely by Bridgerton (749M) and then CoComelon (334M).
Day 20
One thing about Spotify listeners? They like to have a good time.
Over the decades, they’ve streamed one type of playlist more than any other: celebration and party playlists.
When it comes to podcasts, it’s all about the laughs. Comedy is the top-streamed podcast category of all time.
As for audiobooks, storytelling is king. Fiction & Literature is the top-streamed audiobook category of all time.
To explore more from the anniversary celebration, visit our Spotify 20 hub.
