Starboy
Just as the singing-acting-producing artist teases his 6th — and possibly final — album, The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) has earned another career-defining accolade: his 2019 smash-hit Blinding Lights has become the first song to surpass 4 billion streams on Spotify.
Having spawned countless TikToks as a pandemic-era dance challenge, the track overtook Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You (2017) to become the most-played song ever on Spotify in 2022, and has furthered its lead ever since. Fans are anticipating the final installment of the artist's 3-part album series, but Tesfaye has expressed a desire to “close The Weeknd chapter” with its release… though not ruling out releasing music under his real name.
Save your tears
Despite being over 4 years old, Blinding Lights still garners ~2m daily listens on Spotify, which — even under the oft-criticized music streaming payout structures — works out to roughly $6-8k in royalties every day… for one song, on one streaming platform. Indeed, Variety estimates that the track's 4 billion streams would have netted a total ~$20m just from Spotify alone since its release.
And, if the Canadian-Ethiopian star does continue to make music, there’s likely to be more megahits on the way: of the 566 songs to break the 1 billion streams on Spotify, 10 are from The Weeknd’s discography.
