The “Album of the Year” Battle: Grammy vs. Streaming Verdict

Urska Jaksa

Feb 9, 2023

At the 2023 Grammy Awards, Harry Styles won the “Album of the Year” title. We compared the streaming stats of the nominated albums to see if the fans agree.

Of course, streaming data is not the only factor determining how influential an album was. However, it’s a good (and objective) indicator of its impact in terms of popularity.

So, let’s see who wins according to streaming.

#1 Total Streaming Comparison

First, we’ll sort all the nominees in the “Album of the Year” category by the number of total Spotify streams in the last 12 months. We can assume that the attention from the album also spilled over to their pre-existing tracks.

Total streams (12 months) / "Album of the Year" Nominee / Album Title

20.6B / Bad Bunny / Un Verano Sin Ti

6.3B / Harry Styles / Harry’s House

5.7B / Kendrick Lamar / Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers

4.8B / Coldplay / Music of the Spheres

3.4B / Beyonce / Renaissance

3.2B / Adele / 30

1.6B / ABBA / Voyage

1.4B / Lizzo / Special

0.9B / Mary J. Blige / Good Morning Gorgeous (Deluxe)

0.2B / Brandi Carlile / In These Silent Days

See the whole chart here. You can also rank the artists by their cross-channel or channel-specific performance, like YouTube views, TikTok views, radio spins, etc.

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#2 Album Comparison

We’ll further analyze the albums of the first 5 artists (Bad Bunny, Harry Styles, Kendrick Lamar, Coldplay and Beyonce), and compare the results to see who wins the category by the popular vote. To do that, we’ll use the “Compare Tracks” section you can find in each artist’s overview (if you’re not subscribed to Viberate yet, access it by starting a free trial)

To simplify the analysis, the number of streams was recorded at the time of writing this article, regardless of the release date.

Harry Styles: Harry’s House

The album’s Spotify streams (13 tracks): 4.5B

Best performing track: As It Was (1.9B streams, 42% of the album’s streams)

Bad Bunny: Un Verano Sin Ti

The album’s Spotify streams (23 tracks): 10.2B

Best performing track: Me Porto Bonito (1.1B streams, 11% of the album’s streams)

Kendrick Lamar: Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers

The album’s Spotify streams (19 tracks): 1.5B

Best performing track: N95 (229M streams, 15% of the album’s streams)

Coldplay: Music of the Spheres

The album’s Spotify streams (12 tracks): 1.5B

Best performing track: My Universe (888M streams, 59% of the album’s streams)

Beyonce: Renaissance

The album’s Spotify streams (16 tracks): 1.4B

Best performing track: CUFF IT (363M streams, 26% of the album’s streams)

#3 The Verdict

Bad Bunny and Harry Styles are the undisputed finalists of this battle, data concludes. 

According to the number of times the tracks on the album “Un Verano Sin Ti” were streamed, Bad Bunny would be the winner. He was also the most streamed artist overall. Latin music which used to dominate YouTube spilled over to Spotify recently and he is at the forefront of the movement. This only solidifies the trend of Non-English music going mainstream which is clear if we look at the chart of top tracks in 2022.

Harry Styles, however, has the most popular song of 2022. “As It Was” got the most streams, ruled the airwaves, and was by far the most successful track on his album (while Bad Bunny’s streams were more equally distributed).

He definitely is a strong contender, but is he the real winner?

You can look into the numbers of all nominees and decide. We’ve recently reduced the price of our Premium plan to $9.9/month to make music data analytics affordable for every industry professional.  

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