The end of the year of course means only one thing, it’s time to reveal the year end chart, and just like last year I’ve compiled a Spotify Year End Top 200. As with last year, it’s an imperfect chart as I can only compile data when a song is in the weekly top 200, so songs like ‘Physical’ and ‘No Time to Die’ lose out due to dropping out of the top 200 quite early in the year. However it is still very interesting to compare to the OCC’s list.

 

As with the OCC’s list, ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd is the most successful song of the year, picking up a total of 115 million streams throughout the year, slightly lower than last year’s number 1 ‘Someone You Loved’, which amassed 124 million streams, however still a long way ahead of SAINt JHN’s ‘Roses’ at number 2 (79 million streams). ‘Roses’ is followed by a Roddy Ricch double with ‘ROCKSTAR’ with DaBaby at #3 and ‘The Box’ at #4, massively outperforming its OCC position of #12. ‘Dance Monkey’ is at #5, slightly lower than its #2 spot on the OCC list. It’s followed by ‘Watermelon Sugar’, ‘Head & Heart’ and ‘Don’t Start Now’, whilst Lewis Capaldi rounds out the top 10 with last year’s #1 ‘Someone You Loved’ at #9 and ‘Before You Go’ at #10.

 

Outside of the top 10, Lil Mosey’s ‘Blueberry Faygo’ comes in at #11, much stronger on Spotify than the OCC’s chart. 24kGoldn’s massive #1 ‘Mood’ ranks at #15 with Eminem and Juice WRLD’s ‘Godzilla’ at #20, closely followed by ‘WAP’ at #22 and ‘Rain on Me’ at #23. In fact, it was a very successful year for Juice WRLD following his tragic death at the end of 2019 with ‘Lucid Dreams’ rising from #58 in 2019 to #32 this year and impressively spending the whole year inside the top 100. This is followed by ‘Robbery’ at #55 and ‘Wishing Well’ and ‘Come & Go’ also ranking in the top 100. Juice also has a further five tracks inside the top 200, making a total of ten, the most for any artist this year. Of course the top 100 wouldn’t be complete without an appearance from The Killers’ ‘Mr. Brightside’ which is up six places from last year at #42. Other older songs reaching the top 100 are ‘Riptide’ at #83 and ‘Wonderwall’ at #86, with ‘Dreams’ by Fleetwood Mac just missing out at #101 after it went viral on TikTok earlier in the year.

 

In general streaming was down in comparison to 2019 with only 14 songs surpassing 50 million streams this year compared to 20 last year. The cut off for the top 100 was also lower compared to last year with the #100 racking up 20.6 million streams compared to 21.9 million in 2019. However one area where streaming wasn’t down was when it came to Christmas songs. In 2019 only three made the top 200, this year however, the top 200 contained 12 Christmas songs with two even making the top 100, with ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ at #71 and ‘Last Christmas’ at #74. Further evidence of the popularity of Christmas songs this year can be seen when you look at the biggest streaming weeks of the year with eight of the top 10, including the top four, being achieved by Christmas songs.

 

Out of the nine additional Christmas songs compared to last year, six were new entries having never made the top 200 before, however three were returning entries. ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ (#122), ‘Fairytale of New York’ (#166) and ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ (#168), all three returning to the chart having last made the top 200 in 2018, and in the case of the Pogues’ classic in 2017 as well. There were two other re-entries in the top 200, with Travis Scott’s ‘goosebumps’ at #93, returning after the success of his Fortnite concert in April having previously made the top 200 in 2017. And finally Arctic Monkeys’ modern classic ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ at #128 having previously charted in both 2017 and 2018 but having missed out last year.

 

The full spreadsheet containing the whole top 200, as well as some additional songs can be found below as well as a sheet of some statistics about the year in the same document.

I hope this is interesting to people and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask :)

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KLl...#gid=1540505719

 

 

 

I wouldn't have guessed that 'goosebumps' ever made the top 200 of a previous year - I know it has been quietly racking up a huge stream count over the years but didn't realise it had already been such a consistent chart presence before the Fortnite event.

It only just made the top 200 in 2017, was #180-something I think

A brilliant resource! Thanks for sharing.

 

It often seems to be acts like Lil Mosey and Juice Wrld whose songs do better on Spotify than in overall sales. I assume that is partly because more of their Spotify streams are free rather than premium?

One would assume they do better among paid Spotify users than among users of other services as well. It's just that Spotify is a bigger platform for them.

Interesting spreadsheet, thank you!

Thanks for sharing this, nice to see a modern classic like Riptide in the top 100. One of my favourite songs of the past couple of years, Falling by Trevor Daniel also in there, that is an underrated song.

I’ve added some more information to the second part of the spreadsheet in the form of some more stats now the OCC List is out, here’s a brief overview:

 

For the second year in a row, a Juice WRLD song ranks as the highest song to not make the OCC Year End. Last year it was ‘Lucid Dreams’ at #58, this year it’s ‘Robbery’ at #55. In fact three of the top 10 songs in this category are by Juice WRLD with Wishing Well being the third highest song and Come & Go the sixth. A mention must also go out to ‘positions’ by Ariana Grande which was #81 on the Spotify chart despite not making the OCC one, the eighth highest song in this category.

 

‘Lucid Dreams’ instead takes the title of biggest over performer on the Spotify chart compared to the OCC one, ranking a massive 63 places above its OCC position on the Spotify chart. This is followed by Pop Smoke’s ‘For the Night’ (47 places) and Dave’s ‘Location’, a carry over from last year, (39 places). In fact nine of the top 10 songs in this category are hip-hop/rap songs, the only one that isn’t is Trevor Daniel’s ‘Falling’ at #7, outperforming its OCC position by 33 spots

 

Finally in the category of biggest under performers on Spotify compared to the OCC, there are four songs which missed the top 200 completely this year on Spotify which made the OCC’s top 100. Last year there were 6 of these songs and in 2017 there were none. Most of these songs are carry over hits from previous years with the exception of ‘Stupid Love’ at #5 (76 places below its OCC position), ‘Break Up Song’ at #6 (65 places) and ‘Kings & Queens’ at #7 (63 places). The song which stands out the most on this list however is Maroon 5’s ‘Memories’, massively under performing in comparison to its OCC position of #28 at #105 on the Spotify chart (77 places).