What I do find interesting and pretty cool is that the public for the most part does have great taste when it comes to streaming pre 2000 songs. Every older song that makes this list pretty much is brilliant, while enormous selling rubbish like Robson & Jerome is nowhere to be seen. And who’d have thought there’d be a time when Bryan Adams’ biggest seller was not his 16 week #1 but his classic that didn’t make the Top 40.

 

I also think the late 2010s hits will fade over time and there’ll be more old songs creeping in as well as a few more 2020s hits.

I also think the late 2010s hits will fade over time and there’ll be more old songs creeping in as well as a few more 2020s hits.

That's what I always find interesting about this, the fact that it's always developing. Every single stream or download ticking over a new paradigm. Also any excuse to re-post my graphs

 

This is data I took from Spotify's top 100 most streamed songs list on January 1st of each year (thanks Wikipedia!). The 'x' on each of the boxplots represents the mean release date. It was stuck in 2015 for ages but last year it actually jumped back. Despite the inclusion of newer songs, the average release year is now older than it was 7 years ago. You could also say that the average song in 2018 was 2-3 years old, now it's 10-11 years old(!) Suspect it'll still be trending back this way when I update it in January.

What I do find interesting and pretty cool is that the public for the most part does have great taste when it comes to streaming pre 2000 songs. Every older song that makes this list pretty much is brilliant, while enormous selling rubbish like Robson & Jerome is nowhere to be seen. And who’d have thought there’d be a time when Bryan Adams’ biggest seller was not his 16 week #1 but his classic that didn’t make the Top 40.

 

I also think the late 2010s hits will fade over time and there’ll be more old songs creeping in as well as a few more 2020s hits.

 

It is interesting, I agree... but I'm not sure I'm quite as enthusiastic about it as you are. I kinda feel like it is rewriting history a little bit - yep we all hate the Robson and Jerome tracks but they were huge and those kind of tracks were a big part of the music industry in the 90s. And for every one of those that have gone, an era defining classic like Can't Get You Out Of My Head has also gone. So yeah, some good things and some bad.

 

It would be interesting to compile a list of the 40 most streamed songs from each year as a comparable year end chart to the official one of the time, that would make for a great countdown each week for the Sunday sessions

This is data I took from Spotify's top 100 most streamed songs list on January 1st of each year (thanks Wikipedia!). The 'x' on each of the boxplots represents the mean release date. It was stuck in 2015 for ages but last year it actually jumped back. Despite the inclusion of newer songs, the average release year is now older than it was 7 years ago. You could also say that the average song in 2018 was 2-3 years old, now it's 10-11 years old(!) Suspect it'll still be trending back this way when I update it in January.

Interesting graphs and certainly another illustration that legacy streaming is more prominent than it was during the late 2010s. I did wonder whether the January 1st sampling was skewering towards New Year's Eve playlisting, which have maybe become more honed towards taste for older music in recent years, but reading again if you mean the lists released on January 1st covering the whole of previous year, then I get it ^_^

 

It is interesting, I agree... but I'm not sure I'm quite as enthusiastic about it as you are. I kinda feel like it is rewriting history a little bit - yep we all hate the Robson and Jerome tracks but they were huge and those kind of tracks were a big part of the music industry in the 90s. And for every one of those that have gone, an era defining classic like Can't Get You Out Of My Head has also gone. So yeah, some good things and some bad.

I do agree that the loss of huge sellers such as Robson & Jerome and 'Love Is All Around' from these lists does resemble an erasure of history to some extent, and that comparing genuine sales in those eras with streams will always be an apples and pears exercise. I do think there is value in combining the two in this way - however I think the streaming ratio is largely to blame. As I've mentioned before, the OCC had an opportunity in July 2017, when they introduced ACR and set it to 300:1, to say this is the ratio we will now use for all-time sales, EOYs, certifications, and any kind of ongoing legacy totalling. Instead, they stuck with 100:1, only making a minor change later to set free streams to 600:1, but the majority are paid and therefore still 100:1, which has led to how quickly the streams of the last decade or so (whether for old or new songs) have smothered the genuine sales that came before. Although even at 300:1, this would have happened at some point.

 

Thanks for compiling the list Julian!

Edited August 24, 2024Aug 24 by jimwatts

Interesting graphs and certainly another illustration that legacy streaming is more prominent than it was during the late 2010s. I did wonder whether the January 1st sampling was skewering towards New Year's Eve playlisting, which have maybe become more honed towards taste for older music in recent years, but reading again if you mean the lists released on January 1st covering the whole of previous year, then I get it ^_^

Oh, didn't mean it to be confusing. Jan 1st is just me saying that I check it once a year, as an all-time list. The only hint of bias there is that Christmas music will have just peaked but will be declining again for another 10 months. So, when I got this list, Mariah had just snuck into the top 100, but quickly fell back out again. I assume she'll make the cut again for 2025, but if I'd been taking these snapshots in June, she'd have missed both times.

One thing to note is that most of the old songs that get a lot of streams are songs that were successful globally, in particular in America, so songs that didn’t make it in the US are at a disadvantage in this list.

 

I do love this list though, and I think it’s a really valuable thing to do, so thank you

From Music Week.

 

Shape of you – 6.29m chart units made up of 864,000 downloads and 627.27m streams

From Music Week.

 

Shape of you – 6.29m chart units made up of 864,000 downloads and 627.27m streams

Thanks - a bit lower than I estimated for that. “Galway Girl” seems to have been hovering on the edge of 5x platinum for ages too. In general Ed’s back catalogue definitely isn’t streaming like it was.

The full list (sorry I know there are some inconsistencies with the years but can’t be bothered to sort right now ;) ):

 

1 Ed Sheeran – SHAPE OF YOU (2017) 6.33m

2 Band Aid - DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS (1984) 5.98m

3 Killers - MR BRIGHTSIDE (2004) 5.76m

4 Lewis Capaldi – SOMEONE YOU LOVED (2019) 5.64m

5 Wham! - LAST CHRISTMAS/EVERYTHING SHE WANTS (1984) 5.56m

6 Ed Sheeran – PERFECT (2017) 5.44m

7 Queen - BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY/THESE ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES (1975/1991) 5.23m

8 Mariah Carey - ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU (1994) 5.00m

9 Elton John - SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT/CANDLE IN THE WIND 1997 (1997) 4.96m

10 Ed Sheeran – THINKING OUT LOUD (2014) 4.72m

It appears Elton John has sold a fair bit more than estimated here then as he's still 5th in the post-1994 chart as per MW this week:

 

6,360,593 Ed Sheeran - Shape of You

5,903,563 The Killers - Mr Brightside

5,723,849 Lewis Capaldi - Someone You Loved

5,504,332 Ed Sheeran - Perfect

5,050,306 Elton John - Something About the Way You Look Tonight / Candle in the Wind 1997

5,001,461 Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas Is You

 

Mariah will presumably overtake even before the peak Christmas season though

I suspect streams for “Something About The Way…” are now being counted in the Elton total which is boosting it a bit. I’m not sure if they only count the streams for the lead track and they’re now classing that as the lead.