Study Reveals Which Artists Gained the Most Spotify Streams, Social Media Followers During 2020’s First Half

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Benee is the only artist to place on Chartmetric’s top-10 lists for Spotify streams, YouTube channel views, Shazam counts, and trending TikTok songs.

Music-analytics firm Chartmetric shed light upon a series of telling industry trends in its newly published half-year report, including the artists that enjoyed the largest uptick in monthly Spotify streams.

In arriving at its conclusions, the four-year-old music-data company tracked a whopping 2.4 million or so artists across several platforms and channels. Beginning with increases in monthly Spotify plays between January 1st and June 30th of this year, Beabadoobee experienced a more than 1,932 percent hike in listenership, from nearly 1.5 million to almost 30 million. Following the 20-year-old British-Filipino singer was German DJ Topic, whose monthly Spotify plays jumped over 1,600 percent. Lastly, Jack Harlow rounded out the top three (and the artists whose percentage growth was in the thousands), with a 1,271.89 percent boost.

And in an interesting reflection of (generally young) streamers’ preferences, all but one of the 10 acts that recorded the largest gains in monthly Spotify streams are solo artists. (The outlier, Surfaces, is a duo.) Also worth noting is that nine of the 10 top gainers are under the age of 30 (excepting 38-year-old Ñengo Flow); at least seven of 10 are age 25 or younger, in a point that may affect older musicians’ ability to “make it” in the long term.

Next, Trevor Daniel enjoyed the biggest YouTube channel viewer gain between January’s start and June’s end, with his 2,819.18 percent boost representing an increase from 6.79 million to nearly 200 million. The 25-year-old was followed by Auckland’s Benee, the sole artist to secure spots on the Spotify listenership chart (fourth place), the YouTube channel viewership rankings (second place, once again), Shazam counts (“Supalonely” took the fifth slot), and trending TikTok songs (“Supalonely” placed seventh).

These records may attest to the relative difficulty – and corresponding payoff – associated with making an impression on multiple digital platforms. To be sure, Benee was also the only artist to crack both the Spotify chart and the YouTube chart. Ramy Sabry rounded out the top three of the latter analysis (as a growth percentage), nabbing about 27 million views to Benee’s 150.14 million.

Finally, on the social media front, 23-year-old Gabi Martins experienced the largest percentage growth in Instagram followers, 615 or so percent. She placed second in overall follower growth, however, behind fellow Brazilian artist Manu Gavassi, whose follower total swelled to 15.63 million but was roughly 3,000,000 higher than Martins’ in January.

25-year-old Lil Baby’s Twitter followers grew by 123.34 percent between January 1st and June 30th, leading the pack, but the rapper placed behind Kimberly Loaiza, Fiersa Besari, Megan Thee Stallion, Haluk Levent, and JD Pantoja in terms of total followers gained.