What was the first song to reach one billion streams?
Before we could ask ourselves questions like what the first song to reach one billion streams was, and argue the validity of such numerical successes against names like Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and so on, tastes were usually dictated by whatever was playing on the radio. Music discovery is an easy game now, thanks to things like Spotify, Apple Music, and any other means of sharing tastes and ideas on the internet. But before, proactive listening was mainly rooted in secondhand promotion and hearsay.
What’s even stranger to think about now is that often people would go to record stores and buy records they weren’t even sure they’d like, simply because they’d heard teasers on the radio, like The Beatles’ ‘Love Me Do’, and that was enough to make them venture down to a store and pick up a record. While choosing something by the Fab Four would have always undoubtedly been a safe bet, it’s easy to imagine the other times when the rest of the record failed to live up to the excitement of the lead single.
But now, we have countless streaming platforms that make the whole experience different. Granted, we still have to wait to hear entire albums to decide if we like them, but there’s a different story of discovery there, a journey we usually feel less offended by if we do indeed decide it’s not for us, because we can take it or leave it, rather than feel burdened by its mere presence among other albums we cherish a whole lot more.
But that also doesn’t take away from the endless debates about what streaming has done for modern music. Royalties debate aside, it’s only enhanced the conversations about pop music and whether any of it is actually as good as the numbers, or whether commercialisation has reached a point where there’s nothing there but pretence and familiar formulas. Take the most-streamed songs, for instance, some, like Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’ and Swift’s ‘Cruel Summer’, might not be what a sceptic considers worthy of such successes, whereas die-hard fans would, of course, disagree.
What was the first song to reach one billion streams?
Others might look at such a list and wonder why there’s such a glaring absence of other popular bands and acts like our Liverpudlian quartet. However, the influx of more recent artists, viral and otherwise, proves that much of this is usually shaped by culture, reflecting momentary or more modern attitudes rather than the contexts of those who shaped the industry as a whole.
Take the first song to reach one billion streams as an example. Being Drake’s ‘One Dance’, this already reflects how much things change, particularly as this reached this number before his reputation changed as a result of one of the biggest feuds in recent hip-hop history, during a time when he was very much at the height of his game with a string of hits that made him entirely untouchable. But that was then.
These numbers become more interesting when you look at those that reached one billion in the first few months of release, like the virality of ‘Apt’, and another of Bruno Mars’ recent smashes, ‘Die with a Smile’. While it’s past anyone to assume Mars’ fleeting influence given how long he’s been in the game, you can’t deny how he’s mastered the art of songs that become internet sensations, in a similar way you could say of Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’ and Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Espresso’, both achieving the coveted billion mark in a similar space of time.
