Every Song With Over 1 Billion Spotify Streams

View the high-resolution of the infographic by clicking here.

Spotify has a relatively short history, launching in Europe in 2008, and eventually moving into the U.S. market in 2011. Since then, the Stockholm-based company has become the world’s most popular audio streaming service with 456 million users across 183 markets.

With such a large userbase, major artists on Spotify have seen their biggest hits accumulate millions, if not billions of streams. So, in July 2021, Spotify created the Billions Club, a playlist comprising every song to reach the 1 billion milestone.

We at Visual Capitalist saw this as an opportunity to create a unique data visualization, so we compiled the entire playlist and arranged it by decade and artist.

The Top 10 Artists

Below are the top 10 artists, ranked by their number of songs with over 1 billion streams. The list actually includes 11 artists because Shawn Mendes, Bruno Mars, and Coldplay are tied with 5 songs in the Billions Club.

Sorting this list in different ways can reveal some interesting takeaways.

By Gender

For starters, Ariana Grande is the only female artist present in the top 10. Her best performing song on Spotify is 7 rings, which was included in her fifth studio album thank u, next. The track has accumulated 1.8 billion streams since February 8, 2019.

Female superstars who narrowly missed the top 10 list include Adele, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and Olivia Rodrigo, who all have four songs in the Billions Club.

Most of these artists are relatively new, so it’s reasonable to assume that they’ll be breaking into the top 10 soon. Olivia Rodrigo, for example, just released her debut album SOUR in 2021.

By Artist Tenure

Which top 10 artist has been around the longest?

We measure tenure in this context as the time that has elapsed since the artist’s debut album. In this case, the crown goes to Eminem, who released Infinite in November 1996.

The 11-track album was released on cassette and vinyl, and according to the Eminem Fandom wiki, only sold around 1,000 copies. The title track, Infinite, is the only song from the album that is available on Spotify, and it currently has 33 million plays.

The Full List

The Billions Club contains over 300 songs, with the majority being released in the 2010s. This is largely due to the fact that Spotify launched at the start of that decade.

Below is the data we used to create this infographic, which can be sorted by track name, artist, play count, track length, or release date.

Note: Our list includes two songs that have crossed one billion streams, but have not yet been added to the official playlist.

Please note that new songs are constantly being added to the Billions Club, so our list may not be up to date for very long. Both Rihanna and Taylor Swift will be joining the club any day now as Umbrella (feat. Jay-Z) and Blank Space tick up towards the one billion mark.

With songs on this playlist receiving over 446 billion streams so far, at least some of them are likely to be familiar to you. Some may even find their way into your annual feature called Spotify Wrapped, a personalized roundup sent to Spotify users covering your most listened to songs of the year.

One Final Note

With the holidays upon us, you’re going to be hearing a lot of Christmas music in the coming weeks, whether it’s at home, at the mall, or in a cafe.

Chances are, one of those songs will be Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You. Not only is this song a holiday staple, it’s also the only Christmas song with over 1 billion streams on Spotify.

Released in October 1994 with Carey’s first holiday album, Merry Christmas, the track continues to be a massive success. In 2021, it became the first and only Christmas song to receive Diamond certification by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

The design of this graphic is partially inspired by The Pudding’s fantastic piece, The Largest Vocabulary In Hip Hop.

Countries with the Highest Proportion of Immigrants

For people living in cosmopolitan urban centers, it’s easy to overestimate the prevalence of immigrants around the world.

The median proportion of foreign-born people in all countries is just over 5%. In countries with a population greater than one million, only four are majority foreign-born, and only eight surpass the one-third mark.

Here are the top 20 countries with the highest proportion of immigrants in their populations:

Source: UN via World Population Review. Note: Only countries with a population of greater than one million are included.

The United Arab Emirates comes out on top for the highest proportion of immigrants in its population. Impressively, the small Middle Eastern nation ranks sixth in the world for total immigrant population (8.7 million people).

Other countries on the Arabian Peninsula also rank at the top of this list. In Qatar, current host of the 2022 World Cup, 3-in-4 people are immigrants. The high proportion of foreign workers in the country also results in an extreme demographic skew—approximately 75% of the population of Qatar is male.

The one extreme outlier in the region is war-torn Yemen, where only 1.3% of the population are immigrants.

Outside the Middle East, Singapore (43%) takes top spot, followed by Australia (30%).

Spotlight on U.S. Immigration

Although the United States is outside the top 20, it still has by far the most immigrants of any other country (50 million vs. 16 million in second-place Germany).

About 15% of people in the U.S. are immigrants—numbers which are comparable to the historic high in the late 19th century. The proportion of foreign-born people in the country has been on the rise since the 1970s, and is projected to continue rising in coming decades. Around 2030, immigration is expected to surpass natural increases as a driver of population growth.

Countries with the Lowest Proportion of Immigrants

A few countries are magnets for immigration, while a great many more receive very little immigration. This can simply be due to lack of demand, or because of more extreme circumstances such as war or a failing economy. In other cases, immigration policies may limit the number of people who can migrate to a country.

Here are the top 20 countries with the lowest proportion of immigrants in their populations:

Cuba has the lowest level of foreign-born people in its population. The Caribbean nation makes it very difficult for foreign nationals obtain permanent residency.

China comes in second last. In absolute terms, the million or so immigrants living in China may sound like a lot, but pales in comparison to the overall population of 1.4 billion.

Interestingly, Japan–which is the poster child for low immigration–isn’t on the list above. The country’s foreign-born population sits at just over 2%.