Canadian superstar The Weeknd has become the first artist to have two songs streamed more than three billion times on Spotify.
The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’, released in November 2019, already holds the record as the most streamed song on the platform, with more than four billion streams – the only song to go past that barrier, which it did in January 2024.
But now Starboy – his September 2016 collaboration with French electronica duo Daft Punk – has crept past three billion streams.
This achievement demonstrates The Weeknd’s – real name Abel Tesfaye – enduring popularity across the world over recent years – indeed, he was named the “world’s most popular artist” by Guinness World Records in 2023.
It is also indicative of how the way people listen to music has changed in recent years. To date, The Weeknd has sold more than 75 million records worldwide – which is a huge amount – but that is dwarfed by the number of streams they have racked up.
When it was released, ‘Blinding Lights’ went to number one across the world, including in the US, where it became the first song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart to hold a spot in the top 10 for an entire year. It also became the longest charting song by a solo artist on the Hot 100 at 90 weeks.
Starboy was also a number one in the US when it was released as the lead-off single for The Weeknd’s third album, which was also called Starboy.
In all, only five songs have had more than three billion streams on Spotify. The others are ‘Shape of You’ by Ed Sheeran, ‘Someone You Loved’ by Lewis Capaldi and ‘Sunflower’ by Post Malone and Swae Lee.
In addition, more than 560 songs have surpassed one billion streams on Spotify, but just 62 have surpassed two billion.
