Like it or not, streaming services and streaming numbers are pretty much essential for determining the popularity of musicians today. When a single does well on Spotify in its first week of release, that can play a huge part in deciphering whether the band is indeed gaining in popularity, holding serve, or even declining.
Of course, there’s plenty of caveats to that conversation. A band like The Contortionist, who are one of the bigger progressive metal bands out there right now, are bringing in 150,000 monthly Spotify listeners right now (a decline of 3% from September’s numbers), but they also haven’t released new music in three years. So that info checks out. Meanwhile, you have a band like progressive metal veterans Cynic, who just released a new song last month, seeing their monthly Spotify listeners climb up by 80% all the way to 77,000 monthly listeners now in October. It’s interesting data. (Editor’s Note: this data is taken from the beginning of October.)
Thanks to this handy chart, we now know some awfully interesting data about what bands are experiencing more success on Spotify. At least when compared to the previous month’s data that have risen in popularity since September 2021. (It should be noted, of course, that the above list is NOT all-encompassing – merely a selection.) Join us as we parse through some of the more interesting numbers here, so you don’t have to. And shout out to the monster who put the spreadsheets together – truly doing God’s work.
*Linkin Park are still one of the highest-streamed rock/metal bands in history, at least currently. That’s not likely to change, despite the fact that the band’s last proper release was 2017’s One More Light – though they did release a 20th anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory last year, which helped the band surge to reach a new generation of fans. It also helps that their music, especially their biggest singles, are often found on some of Spotify’s most followed playlists – a common theme you’ll find here. They didn’t exactly gain a ton of followers compared to September, but they’re still going up!
*Spiritbox’s debut full-length, Eternal Blue, is experiencing obvious success – with a debut at #13 on the Billboard Top 200. They’re bringing in almost 830,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, with a 34% increase compared to their September numbers. Given the band’s extensive radio support via XM Octane as well as their early 2022 tour with Underoath (that will bring them new fans), and you have a recipe for continued success.
*Bring Me The Horizon released a new song, “DiE4u”, last month – so this one also makes sense. In fact, the song is already up to 10 million streams on Spotify as of the time of this writing, which also proves that bands who have a constant stream of releases do rather well on streaming services. There’s also the added viral effect of the band’s song “Can You Feel My Heart” trending earlier this year on TikTok, which actually has ended up making it the band’s most popular song on Spotify with over 270 million streams. In fact, they’re currently at 9.368 million listeners on Spotify right now at the time of this writing – a huge jump from September, where the band was just over 8 million.
*Other interesting notes include Bullet For My Valentine and Volbeat, who are both gearing up for new album cycles, seeing a combined almost 16% jump in monthly listeners. To reiterate, it’s common for bands with strongly performing new singles or records to see a sizable jump monthly, and when you add critical success to the formula, they end up doing even better.
*Knocked Loose have vaulted up 11.3% from their September numbers, with almost 300k monthly listeners on Spotify at the time of this writing. They are currently on an extensive tour cycle, where it’s likely many new fans were introduced to the band, but they haven’t released new music since 2019’s A Different Shade Of Blue. (Just kidding, they did a few days ago, and now the band is almost at 360k monthly Spotify listeners.)
