Which Artists “Won” the 2020–21 Lockdown on Spotify?

Sara Mekinc

Jun 23, 2021

This past year, the phrase “making use of Covid time” has been thrown around A LOT when it comes to describing someone accomplishing … well, anything.

As a research and analytics platform, we wanted to know what that phrase meant for music acts on Spotify – more specifically, whether the artists have managed to keep their audiences engaged “remotely”, and which artists have done that better than the rest.

👉 Get the details in our new Spotify report.👈 

We looked into:

• the top 1,000 Spotify artists in Pop, Hip Hop, Latin, Rock, R&B and Electronic genre, to select those with the fastest-growing fanbase;
• Spotify data from April 2020 to April 2021;
• the artists with at least 10,000 Spotify followers and at least 100,000 monthly listeners (by A&R standards, this indicates artists on the verge of becoming mainstream);
• the artists with a listener-to-follower ratio between 5 and 15 (a great metric that indicates overall solid popularity and separates artists with millions of track listens from artists who successfully “convert” listeners into followers and fans).

We discovered a couple of interesting facts...

#1 Pop ruled Spotify

Pop was the winning genre, followed by Hip Hop and Latin. However, Hip Hop and Latin artists held the most solid listener-to-follower ratio overall, suggesting a more established fanbase.

#2 TikTok is insanely influential

Viral tracks on TikTok easily translate into Spotify streams. A case in point: once Mother Mother went viral, their Spotify numbers soared, landing the band the #1 spot in Rock.

#3 Spotify playlists boost success

The majority of the top-performing artists landed a spot on at least one influential Spotify playlist.

➡️ Check out the Spotify report and see the top names.