How Many Monthly Listeners on Spotify Is Underground?

Matic Magister

Oct 29, 2025

Understanding Spotify's Monthly Listeners Metric

Spotify's "monthly listeners" metric measures how many unique users stream an artist's music during a 28-day window. It’s dynamic and updates daily, offering a near real-time view of an artist’s reach. Unlike followers, monthly listeners reflect active engagement. A user doesn’t have to follow an artist to count as a listener—they just need to play a track. This makes the metric a useful indicator of current popularity.

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However, monthly listeners don't measure fan loyalty or depth of engagement. An artist might have a viral track spiking their numbers, but it doesn't mean they’ve built a lasting fanbase. Still, for many music professionals, monthly listeners are the first number they check when scouting talent, benchmarking artists, or planning marketing strategies.

So, How Many Monthly Listeners on Spotify Is Underground?

There’s no official cutoff between "mainstream" and "underground" artists. But based on Spotify trends and industry consensus, artists with fewer than 50,000 monthly listeners are typically considered underground. This doesn’t mean the music lacks quality or reach—it simply hasn't reached mass visibility.

Here’s a rough breakdown based on public Spotify profiles:

• Under 10,000 monthly listeners: emerging or niche underground artists.
• 10,000–50,000: active underground or independent artists with a growing audience.
• 50,000–250,000: on the rise, potentially transitioning from underground to mainstream.

In reality, the answer to depends on genre and region. A techno artist with 30,000 monthly listeners might have more influence in their niche than a pop act with 100,000. Context matters.

Why You Need Music Analytics Tools Like Viberate

To effectively monitor where you stand—and where your competition stands—you need reliable analytics. Viberate provides exactly that. Think of it as a professional layer on top of what Spotify for Artists offers. Instead of analyzing just your own data, you can benchmark yourself against any artist on the platform.

Here’s how Viberate can help:

Spotify Analytics of 11M+ Artists

Get access to premium stats across 11 million artists. Track monthly listeners, followers, playlist appearances, and overall streaming performance. Use the platform to validate strategies or scout talent.

All Streaming Stats in One Place

Follow the evolution of monthly listeners, identify breakout songs, and see how metrics shift over time. All data is consolidated, so there’s no need to jump between tools.

Spotify Monthly Listeners Tracker

Viberate allows you to track the monthly listener history of any artist and compare it with the industry average. You also get a view of follower growth over time, helping you understand if an artist is truly building momentum.

Audience Geolocation

Knowing where your listeners are coming from is essential. Viberate provides a global map showing the locations of an artist’s monthly listeners by country and city. This allows targeted promotional campaigns and smarter tour routing.

Playlist Analytics

Playlist placement is a major growth driver. With Viberate, you can track which playlists an artist is featured on, how often, and what kind of traction those placements generate. You can even search for the best playlists to pitch based on your genre.

Streaming Performance Ratios

Beyond raw numbers, Viberate calculates critical ratios like listener-to-follower and streams-to-listener. These reveal how engaging an artist's catalog is. If someone has a high stream-to-listener ratio, it likely means listeners are playing more than one song—an indication of genuine interest.

Track Performance Comparison

Viberate gives you a sortable database of songs, ranked by all-time, 12-month, 1-month, and 7-day performance. You can filter by release date or genre, making it easy to identify consistent performers or sudden risers.

Charts for Talent Discovery and Collaboration Planning

With customizable filters, you can discover artists by genre, country, or audience size. The "HOT" filter highlights emerging talent. You can also identify artists with similar fanbases to yours—ideal for collaboration or joint promotion.

Conclusion

If you’re asking how many monthly listeners on Spotify is underground, the answer isn’t universal—but under 50,000 is a strong indicator. What matters more is how those listeners engage, where they’re based, and how those numbers evolve over time. That’s where Viberate proves its value.

From tracking performance to scouting playlists and planning collaborations, Viberate is the platform built for professionals serious about growth. Start using it to move beyond assumptions—and turn raw data into real strategy. 

Source of music data: Viberate.com