Drake Tops Justin Bieber as Spotify’s Most-Streamed Artist

Drake has become the most-streamed artist on Spotify, Billboard reports. The company confirmed that he had surpassed Justin Bieber for that distinction. The achievement comes as Drake’s new album VIEWS has been on Spotify for less than a week. VIEWS was available in its first two weeks of release only on Apple Music. In its first week of release, the album generated a record 245.1 million U.S. streams. VIEWS has also sold more than 1 million copies, becoming only the second album to reach that milestone in 2016. (The first, Adele’s 25, was released last year.) 

Separately, Spotify told Billboard that its curated playlists are yielding more than 1 billion streams per week. The company’s head content executive, in a statement, trumpeted the feat as a triumph for Spotify’s use of both human experts and algorithms to develop its in-house playlists. Examples of the lists include “Rap Caviar,” “Baila Reggaeton,” “Get Turnt,” “Teen Party,” and “Exitos de Hoy.”

Read our feature “Up Next: How Playlists Are Curating the Future of Music,” check out “Drake’s VIEWS: The 5 Most Important Things to Know” on the Pitch, and see our interview with Stwo, who co-produced the album’s “Weston Road Flows.”

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