The idea that something is going on with Spotify has been rumbling for a while now. It seems like more and more, people keep pointing out that many #1 songs last year and this year have similar streams, if not less streams, than many #1s from the early days of streaming, even though all we keep hearing is how streaming continues to grow.

I was curious, so I decided to look at the available data. Although I would have preferred to be more comprehensive and include data from every single day of each year, that would take a prohibitive amount of time, so I did what I thought was the next best thing and added up all the streams in the Top 200 from the first Friday of every month during each year to get a rough estimate of how many streams the top bracket garnered annually. Though this is imperfect, it gives us a general idea how streams as a whole performed each year.

From this, we can see a few things:

• Streams have indeed grown each year until 2025.

• 2023 saw the most growth. (Note: this was the year Discovery Mode (AKA "autoplay") was made widely available to artists on the platform.)

• 2025 was the first year there was a decrease. (Note: Modified APKs were disabled this year.)

• Although the year isn't over yet, based on the first half, 2026 looks to be continuing and in fact increasing upon this downward trend.

Spotify Yearly Streaming Data (Compiled from Top 200, First Friday of Every Month)

Year	Total	Change (#)	Change (%)	Avg /Month	Avg/Month (Change)
2017	2,668,109,368	-	-	222,342,447	-
2018	2,951,644,592	+283,535,224	+11%	245,970,383	+23,627,936
2019	3,174,262,200	+222,617,608	+8%	264,521,850	+18,551,467
2020	3,359,139,499	+184,877,299	+6%	279,928,292	+15,406,442
2021	3,546,024,457	+186,884,958	+6%	295,502,038	+15,573,746
2022	3,906,222,152	+360,197,695	+10%	325,518,513	+30,016,475
2023	4,599,105,256	+692,883,104	+18%	383,258,771	+57,740,258
2024	5,057,309,479	+458,204,223	+10%	421,442,457	+38,183,686
2025	4,891,180,378	-166,129,101	-3%	407,598,365	-13,844,092
2026	TBD	TBD	-5%	388,410,386	-19,187,979

It's not represented in this data, but I also noticed that on average, the bottom of the Top 200 increased at a more dramatic rate than the top did year by year, indicating streams as a whole were being dispersed across more tracks than just a handful at the top — another sign of the "death of the monoculture" if you will. That is, until last year, when the bottom stayed roughly the same, but the top collapsed and has never been able to consistently reach the same heights since. (Remember all those 10M+ days in mid-late 2024? We haven't seen those regularly since early 2025.)

With all this in mind, what do you make of this?

I think there's many reasons. One being that people are listening to a wider variety of music, and aren't all playing the biggest hits. A lot of this is how big catalogue music is growing, along with the continued micro-genres. Another is that there's more streaming services, not everyone is using Spotify and we lack numbers for a few services.

Maybe it's competition from YTM and Amazon. Since they offer multiple tiers just like Spotify, I can see some users switching.

YouTube music just had it's biggest growth quarter since 2018

This is why we use Apple Music

9 minutes ago, Shinkirou said:

Maybe it's competition from YTM and Amazon. Since they offer multiple tiers just like Spotify, I can see some users switching.

YouTube music just had it's biggest growth quarter since 2018

People are just switching from Spotify to other services ,I don't see streaming dying like Cassettes or CD's in future at all .

Not as many people are using spotify thats why. Those tired playlists turned me away

20 minutes ago, Shinkirou said:

Maybe it's competition from YTM and Amazon. Since they offer multiple tiers just like Spotify, I can see some users switching.

YouTube music just had it's biggest growth quarter since 2018

can confirm. switched from spotify to ytm a few months ago

They're getting better and more aggressive at purging bot accounts and plays to end up paying less to artists in general

I'll let Spotify itself worry about that

Doesn't Spotify have the most expensive subscription plans on the market for audio streaming ? They've become too greedy these past 2-3 years...

I was thinking about switching back to Spotify from Apple Music but the subscription is $2 more expensive for some reason so I will not be doing that

What about the overall streams of the entire Spotify library? Say, first half of 2025 vs 2026? I don't know if the top 200 is the right sample to analyse. I feel like perhaps international acts are seemingly seeing less support because many countries start to support or stream their local artists. Spotify is pretty big in my country and this definitely the case here. Local acts has been stomping international acts for a while now. Except Taylor Swift.

Edited June 25Jun 25 by FailSafe

Idk if I'm in the minority, but I've gone back to using my iPod and just loading the piles of CDs I've accumulated over the years onto it… I own all the music I want to listen to and I listen to albums/singles on YouTube before making the decision to purchase.

When it comes to everyone else, most people I know have switched over to Apple Music for a multitude of reasons.

Now this is what I wanna see from ATRL! Thank you so much for your hardwork to put together these insights for us!

Anyway, I believe that Spotify not having complete monopology of music market shares and there are multiple sparsed bubbles of thriving music streaming sites is a WIN / a positive thing imo!

Spotify is more expensive but it is better quality and format

There was some controversy with the ceo of Spotify donating to bad causes which turned a lot of people off.

I use Spotify because I have a family plan and my father uses it for work, but if I had a choice, I would pick Apple Music or Amazon Music (due to better audio quality), or YouTube Premium—which would also let me watch ad-free videos, effectively giving me two services in one. I stick with Spotify because I'm "forced" to, not because it's my actual preference.