List of most-streamed songs in the United Kingdom

In June 2014, the Official Charts Company (OCC) started including audio streams in the official UK Singles Chart, recognising their importance as an indicator of current popular trends and tastes in music. From this point onward, the popularity of a single or album track can be measured by both sales (which include paid downloads) and streams on officially recognised subscription and ad-funded on-demand services.[1][2] Although the OCC added these figures to the chart in July 2014, they started compiling them in May 2012 through the Official Audio Streaming Chart. They are taken from on-demand audio streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Deezer and Tidal, all of which are members of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).[3]

Having been streamed over 200 million times, "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran is the UK's most-streamed song ever.

As of September 2017, the most-streamed song in the UK is "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran, with over 200 million streams.[4] In June 2016, "Sorry" by Justin Bieber became the first song to pass 100 million streams.[5] By September 2016, it had been joined by two other Bieber songs: "Love Yourself" and "What Do You Mean?" as well as "One Dance" by Drake (the first song to achieve 100 million streams in a calendar year).[6]

"Shape of You" is also the song with the most streams in one week in chart week ending 16 March 2017 with 14.2 million, beating its own previous best of 13.4 million in the week ending 19 January 2017. "Castle on the Hill", also by Sheeran, is the only other song to get more than 10 million streams in a week (with 11.07 million).[7]

History
"Sorry" by Justin Bieber (pictured) was the first song with over 100 million streams in the UK.

In July 2014, the OCC announced that "Pompeii" by Bastille was the most-streamed song in the UK with 26.6 million streams.[3] "Cheerleader" by OMI was the most-streamed song of 2015 with 71.7 million[8] and "Rather Be" by Clean Bandit featuring Jess Glynne was the most-streamed song in 2014 with just short of 40 million.[9]

The record for most streams in a week has been broken many times since 2012 when the OCC started measuring it as streaming levels have continued to grow. In 2013, "Get Lucky" by Daft Punk was the first song to achieve 1 million streams in a week,[10] "Uptown Funk" broke the 2 million streams barrier at the end of 2014[11] and in April 2015, "See You Again" by Wiz Khalifa featuring Charlie Puth passed 3 million streams.[12] In November 2015, "Hello" by Adele almost doubled the record to 7.32 million streams and, in the same week, Bieber also passed 4 million with "Sorry".[13]

In the week ending 4 October 2014, "All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor became the first single ever to reach the UK top 40 on streams alone before it was available to buy[10] and in the week ending 13 December 2014, "Thinking Out Loud" became the first song to reach number one despite selling less than Union J's "You Got It All", the number-two song, due to streaming.[14][15]

During 2015, streaming grew with an 80 percent increase in the first half of the year compared with the same period in 2014, with 59 songs being streamed more than 10 million times[16] and 17 more than 20 million times.[17] In total 53.7 billion songs were streamed in the UK in 2015, equating to almost 2,000 songs played in each UK household.[18]

In December 2016, the OCC announced that streaming had grown from 275 million per week in 2014 to 990 million and, consequently, the formula for converting streams to sale equivalents in the singles chart would be changed from 100:1 to 150:1 from January 2017.[19] Additionally, in June 2017, it was decided that after a record has spent at least 10 weeks on the chart, any track which has declined for three consecutive weeks will see its streams:sales ratio change from 150:1 to 300:1, in an attempt to accelerate their disappearance from the chart.[20]

Most-streamed songs
See also: List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom, List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom, and List of most downloaded songs in the United Kingdom

These are the UK's 21 most-streamed songs using data from January 2014 onwards. They are the only songs to exceed 100 million streams.[4]

Position Song name Artist Released Streams Ref(s)
1. "Shape of You" Ed Sheeran January 2017 190,170,600 [4]
2. "One Dance" Drake featuring Wizkid and Kyla April 2016 179,100,700 [4]
3. "Sorry" Justin Bieber October 2015 144,371,900 [4]
4. "Love Yourself" Justin Bieber November 2015 134,066,600 [4]
5. "Despacito" /
"Despacito (Remix)"		 Luis Fonsi featuring Daddy Yankee /
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber		 January 2017
April 2017		 133,417,400 [4]
6. "What Do You Mean?" Justin Bieber May 2015 132,025,600 [4]
7. "Thinking Out Loud" Ed Sheeran June 2014 130,211,900 [4]
8. "Cheap Thrills" Sia featuring Sean Paul March 2016 124,764,000 [4]
9. "Castle on the Hill" Ed Sheeran January 2017 119,260,700 [4]
10. "Closer" The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey July 2016 119,259,100 [4]
11. "Lean On" Major Lazer and DJ Snake featuring MØ April 2015 112,257,300 [4]
12. "I Took a Pill in Ibiza" Mike Posner April 2016 111,229,400 [4]
13. "Stitches" Shawn Mendes September 2015 108,374,000 [4]
14. "Uptown Funk" Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars December 2014 107,616,000 [4]
15. "Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix)" OMI April 2015 105,743,900 [4]
16. "7 Years" Lukas Graham February 2016 105,421,100 [4]
17. "Lush Life" Zara Larsson January 2016 104,462,500 [4]
18. "Say You Won't Let Go" James Arthur September 2016 104,332,700 [4]
19. "This Is What You Came For" Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna April 2016 102,979,600 [4]
20. "Cold Water" Major Lazer featuring Justin Bieber and MØ July 2016 102,829,400 [4]
21. "Take Me to Church" Hozier January 2014 101,785,100 [4]
As of September 2017

See also

References
  1. Lane, Dan (23 June 2014). "Streaming and the Official Singles Chart: Everything you need to know!". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
  2. Lane, Dan (23 June 2014). "Infographic: The growth of music streaming in the UK". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
  3. Lane, Dan (23 July 2014). "The top 10 most-streamed songs and artists of all time revealed". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 25 July 2014.
  4. Copsey, Rob (19 September 2017). "The UK's Official Chart 'millionaires' revealed". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
  5. Kreisler, Lauren (10 June 2016). "Justin Bieber breaks massive all-time UK streaming record". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 10 June 2016.
  6. Copsey, Rob (1 September 2016). "The Official Top 40 biggest songs of Summer 2016 revealed". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 1 September 2016.
  7. Copsey, Rob (13 January 2017). "Ed Sheeran scores biggest comeback since Adele, smashing TWO Official Chart records". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  8. Copsey, Rob (6 January 2016). "The Official Top 40 most-streamed songs of 2015 revealed". Official Charts Company.
  9. Copsey, Rob (1 January 2015). "The Official Top 40 Most Streamed Songs of 2014". Official Charts Company.
  10. Kreisler, Lauren (28 September 2014). "Meghan Trainor's All About That Bass becomes first song to chart on streams alone". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
  11. Kreisler, Lauren (21 December 2014). "Mark Ronson's Uptown Funk breaks all-time streaming record!". Official Charts Company.
  12. Hooper, Ryan (20 April 2015). "Wiz Khalifa Fast & Furious 7 tribute 'See You Again' tops UK chart to become fastest-selling single of 2015". The Independent. Retrieved 18 June 2016.
  13. Copsey, Rob (30 October 2015). "Adele smashes Official Chart records with comeback single Hello". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 30 October 2015.
  14. "UK Singles Chart 13 December 2014". Official Charts Company. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  15. "Top 40 UK Single Sales". 13 December 2014.
  16. Copsey, Rob (3 July 2015). "The Official Top 40 Most Streamed Songs of 2015 so far". Official Charts Company.
  17. "Here are the singles that have gone past the 20 million streams mark this year in the UK!". British Phonographic Industry. 3 July 2015. Retrieved 3 July 2015.
  18. "Only 14% of the UK pays to stream music". BBC Online. BBC News. 21 June 2016. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  19. Homewood, Ben (19 December 2016). "Official Charts Company changes conversion rate to reflect rise in streaming". Music Week.
  20. Sutherland, Mark (27 June 2017). "Official Charts Company introduces singles chart revamp". Music Week. Intent Media. Retrieved 30 June 2017.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.