Since its launch as a humble Swedish start-up in 2008, Spotify has grown to become the biggest streaming platform in the world. And love it or hate it, Spotify is an important metric of success in the modern music industry. Drake became the first artist to achieve a billion streams for a single song, with One Dance in 2016. Since then, a total of 446 songs have passed that same milestone, with two – The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights and Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You surpassing an incredible 3 billion plays each.
When it comes to rock music, and especially legacy rock music, there are questions of demographic and preference at play. Nearly two thirds of Spotify’s users are aged under 35 and rock fans are more likely than others to listen to traditional radio and music on physical formats. The average age of the Spotify user is creeping up though and streaming is now by far the most common method of music consumption across all combined age groups.
