A new report doesn’t just confirm that rock is as alive as ever, but that Queen is still one of the most popular rock artists today.
Viberate’s report ‘State Of Music’, analysed 50K top artists on each channel, 100K Spotify playlists, 50M tracks and videos and 500 top music festivals.
“We crunched the annual numbers behind every relevant music and social media channel, from Spotify to Beatport and TikTok, and drew conclusions regarding music industry trends and markets in 2022,” the report said.
Pop was the most popular genre on radio across the world, with rock following close behind.
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“Rock is resurrected.” The report says that rock was the fourth most streamed genre on Spotify in 2021, and rock tracks were streamed over 30 billion times.
According to the report, Queen is as popular as ever, sweeping in at number four for most played radio artists, with 2.9 million radio spins.
However, it was the highest rock band on the list. Making Queen the most played rock band on radio across the world.
In 2018, Queen guitarist Brian May marveled at how Queen is still as popular today as it was when Freddie was alive.
May said, “[Queen] is even more global now. How incredible is that? The music seems to cross generational barriers.”
On the report, first place went to Ed Sheeran with 4.3 million spins. Second, Dua Lipa with 4.2 million. And thirdly, The Weeknd with 3 million.
The genre distribution across the top 50K artists on radio was 20% pop, 20% electronic, 15% rock, and 8% hip hop.
Similar to radio, pop dominated the genre distribution (of the top 50K) on Spotify. Pop took 23%, hip hop 17%,electronic 16% and rock 14%.
Justin Bieber took out the top spot for most Spotify followers. But, it was Olivia Rodrigo who arguably had the most success, with “her follower count increased by more than 50 times.”
