Spotify | reveals | Ed Sheeran | as the most-streamed artist | of 2017 surpassing

It may come as little surprise, but Spotify has announced that Ed Sheeran is its most-streamed artist of 2017.

 The British singer-songwriter was also the streaming giant's biggest artist internationally for the year, in terms of global monthly listeners. Sheeran is now notching up 47 million unique listeners every month and has surpassed Drake to attain the record for the most-streamed song ever on Spotify.

 This isn’t the first time Ed Sheeran has nabbed the much-coveted “most-streamed artist” slot for a given year — he also hit the top spot in 2014 .This year, Sheeran also garnered the number one position for most-streamed album (÷) and song (Shape of You).
Curiously, the five most-streamed artists on Spotify were pretty much solo male singer-songwriters, with the exception of DJ/production duo the Chainsmokers:
  • Ed Sheeran
  • Drake
  • The Weeknd
  • Kendrick Lamar
  • The Chainsmokers
Digging down into the most-streamed female artists reveals that Rihanna took top spot for the third year straight, while Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, and Sia filled out the remaining slots.
Other notable tidbits to emerge from Spotify’s arsenal of music-listening data include hip-hop’s rising popularity on the streaming platform, with 74 percent growth over the past 12 months. This was also a good year for Latin music, which grew 110 percent.