Taylor Swift performing live as part of her ongoing Eras Tour. Photo Credit: Ronald Woan
Taylor Swift has officially added her name to the ultra-exclusive list of artists who have cracked an astonishing 100 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
The 33-year-old, who’s teed up the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) for late October, just recently hit the monthly listener milestone on Spotify, which had 551 million monthly active users as of June’s end. Predictably, the Stockholm-headquartered streaming platform went ahead and acknowledged the achievement on social media.
“Queen behavior 👑 On August 29th, Taylor Swift became the first female artist in Spotify history to reach 100 million monthly listeners,” Spotify wrote on Twitter/X, eliciting enthusiastic responses from all manner of pumped-up Swifties.
At present, the sole other act with 100 million or more monthly listeners on Spotify is The Weeknd, who boasts 109.61 million monthly listeners to Swift’s 100.14 million. Consequently, it goes without saying that the list of commercially prominent artists who haven’t surpassed 100 million Spotify monthly listeners – including the likes of Drake (76.31 million), Bad Bunny (78.99 million), Shakira (65.40 million), and Post Malone (65.25 million) – is decidedly long.
Of course, in keeping with their strong Spotify presences, Taylor Swift and The Weeknd (both of whom are signed to Universal Music Group) have made headlines on the year for setting various tour-revenue and streaming records.
To be sure, it was only in July that Swift’s re-recorded Speak Now effort smashed Spotify’s existing single-day listenership record, for instance, while some observers have predicted that her ongoing Eras Tour could generate a staggering $1.4 billion or so.
Moving forward – and especially once the re-recorded 1989 drops on October 27th – it’ll be interesting to see whether Swift can eclipse The Weeknd on the Spotify monthly listener front and, in turn, secure the number-one spot on the entire service.
Furthermore, it stands to reason that the multitude of tour dates the Pennsylvania-born artist’s scheduled for the remainder of this year and well into 2024 will also help fuel continued fan interest on streaming platforms.
Bigger picture, Swift’s latest Spotify accomplishment has arrived as each of the major labels is advocating for streaming-compensation changes against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving AI-music landscape. May saw Sony Music head Rob Stringer make clear his belief that “DSPs are watered down by low quality and meaningless volume.”
Meanwhile, Universal Music has throughout 2023 been pushing for royalty reforms, and Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl has suggested that recent streaming price increases could be followed by a series of additional boosts.
