STORY via Forbes - He might not have the No. 1 single in the country, and his latest Earth-shattering album isn’t moving units like it once was, but that doesn’t mean people have stopped listening to #Drake, especially when it comes to streaming.
Swedish streaming giant Spotify has just revealed that the hip-hop star has just become the first act to hit the 10 billion-stream count, further proving his popularity.
The bulk of Drake’s 10 billion plays are thanks to his latest full-length, Views, which took over the world when it was released last year. His first No. 1 hit as the main artist, “One Dance,” which wound up being the biggest hit from the record, now has 1.15 billion plays alone. Back in December, the song became the first to reach the one billion play milestone. Plenty of other songs from Views have impressive play counts, including “Hotline Bling” with just over 600 million, “Too Good” with 520 million and “Controlla” with over 340 million. In fact, Drake racked up well over two billion streams with his last album alone.
A large chunk of Drake’s 10 billion streams may come from Views, but he also has a sizable back catalog that continues to be streamed by people all over the world every day. He now can count seven full-lengths of his own, each of which spun off successful singles, and he has been featured on literally hundreds of tracks fronted by other artists.
As time passes, Drake’s new music is played even more intensely than his older material, even if some of those songs were more successful when they were first released. New single “Fake Love,” which he released back in December, already has well over 320 million plays, while “Best I Ever Had,” the No. 2-charting song that helped launch him as a star, only has 78 million streams. As more and more people sign on and begin using Spotify (the company just hit 50 million paying subscribers earlier this month), the new hits from the biggest names will continue to collect streams at incredible rates.