‘Barbie,’ ‘Little Mermaid,’ Rihanna make up significant 2023 Spotify trends

MANILA, Philippines — While Taylor Swift was the top artist of the 2023 on Spotify, it was cultural events like "Barbie" and Rihanna's Super Bowl performance that spiked the streaming platform's trends this year.

In releasing its Wrapped data for 2023, the platform also revealed streaming data that led to several monthly trends across the board.

February for example saw streams for Rihanna's music go up by 640% in the United States because of her half-time performance at the Super Bowl LVII won by Kansas City Chiefs.

Rihanna's song "B**ch Better Have My Money" saw an incredible 2,600% increase while other tracks like "Diamonds," "Rude Boy," and "We Found Love" figured between a thousand and 1,500%.

Also in February were the notable creation of 200,000 "break-up" playlists that streamed the most Valentine's Day, with top songs added to such playlists including Taylor's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," Ariana Grande's "thank u next," Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone," and Adele's "Someone Like You."

Film releases played a huge part in affecting Spotify's monthly trends particularly Disney's live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid" and the blockbuster "Barbie" starring Margot Robbie as the titular character.

Related: Taylor Swift, boyfriend Travis Kelce reign as Spotify's top artists for 2023

Daily average streams of "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack — both the new film and the animated original from 1989 — saw a nearly 320% spike when the Halle Bailey film came out in May.

Even more remarkable was the 1,560% spike of the Barbie Official Playlist in July as the movie included earwoms like Dua Lipa's "Dance the Night," Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made For?," Charli XCX's "Speed Drive," and Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken."

Barbie-like playlists saw additions of many songs, top ones being Aqua's "Barbie Girl," Britney Spears' "Toxic" and "Oops!… I Did It Again," the Spice Girls' "Wannabe," and Nicki Minaj's "Barbie Tingz."

Viral topics also played a part in monthly trends like "Roman Empire" (where searches jumped by 580%) and "girl dinner" where 10,000 playlists where created in October.

Added to the playlists in the latter were songs like "Cherry" by Lana del Rey, "champagne problems" by Taylor Swift," and 2023's most-streamed song of the year "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus.

For the year as a whole, Spotify saw the Afrobeats genre grow by 550% since 2017, with leading artists in such playlists being Burna Boy, Rema, and Libianca.

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