Johannesburg – 2022 was a significant year for music across several genres but it appears that The Weeknd’s 2019 hit single “Blinding Lights” continues to reign supreme.
This is according to Spotify Wrapped 2022 which was released last week, which is a campaign which allows users of the audio streaming and media services provider to view a compilation of data about their activity on the platform over the past year and invites them to share it on social media.
Intrigued to unveil how much the top-streaming artists of 2022 could have earned in royalties, experts at OnlineCasinos.co.uk inserted data into a royalties calculator, Music Gateway, to uncover each track’s estimated earnings.
It found that The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” was Spotify’s top-grossing song of 2022. The song inspiring a TikTok dance craze during lockdown, and the 80s-tinged track is the fastest in Spotify history to reach three billion streams, potentially earning the Canadian artist a whopping $13 580 171 from royalties.
Cashing in around four million fewer, The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” comes in second with an estimated royalty earning of $9 300 077.
Clocking over 2.24 billion plays to date, the Australian rapper’s first chart-topper has been listened to for over 10 000 years collectively on Spotify.
Capturing the third spot is Glass Animal’s “Heat Waves” which became an earworm thanks to a slowed-down version of the song that went viral on TikTok – potentially generating $8 856 951 in royalty earnings off of a staggering 2.13 billion streams.
Taking fourth place with an estimated haul of $8 377 089 is Harry Styles’ 2019 single “Watermelon Sugar”. The singer’s biggest hit “As It Was” – released only this year – sits at the seventh spot ($6 645 628) amassing an impressive 1.6 billion plays so far.
Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” takes the coveted top spot as most streamed album, as well as highest-earning. A combined total play count of 10.2 billion adds an eye-popping $42 383 968 to the Puerto Rican star’s potential wealth.
Dubbed breakup album of the decade, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour” comes second, earning the star an estimated $35 190 626 from royalties. Rounding off the top three is Doja Cat’s “Planet Her”, bagging the American rapper a mind-blowing $25 117 596 in royalty earnings.
In order to compile the research, experts at OnlineCasinos.co.uk first acquired the number of streams for Spotify’s top 50 tracks globally, released in its 2022 Wrapped report.
They then inserted the figures into a royalties calculator, musicgateway.com, to obtain each song’s estimated earnings on the platform. The earnings were noted down in GBP (£) and were converted to euro (€) and US dollar ($) on a currency conversion site, xe.com. The exchange rate was based on the rate on November 30, 2022: 1 GBP = 1.1580231 euro, 1 GBP = 1.2050089 US dollars.
The estimated figures were ranked in descending order to determine the artist potentially racking up the most from Spotify. The same method was repeated for the top albums of 2022 to unveil the highest-earning album on Spotify this year.
Subsequently, the approximate time spent listening to each song was obtained by multiplying the duration of each track and its number of streams. All data was collected from November 30 to December 1, 2022 and is accurate as of then.