songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

Yeah, I wouldn’t have guessed that one would be even in his top 5 songs...

that makes sense to me, that was the massive single from the Greatest Hits album, which sold 12 million copies and was maybe the first Petty album that for my generation was somewhat aimed in our direction. I was 18 when it came out and the previous albums several albums he'd released were all imo a bit more "adult" (Southern Accents, Full Moon Fever, Into the Great Wide Open, Traveling Wilburys.) I liked them but MJLD was a song definitely with an eye on younger listeners, if only for the video. which was huge.

"An Ending (Ascent)" has over 57 million streams! Why?

I think this was in Trainspotting? pretty sure there was a film placement that kickstarted its popularity

yeah it's used in lots of TV shows/movies, including Traffic, which I think is what you're thinking of, but that still struck me as a crazy high number.

xpost (re: Petty)
Interesting -- I see it came out in fall '93, and that was definitely a moment when the song/video would have fallen thru the cracks for me (my first year of college).

Yeah I can see that in retrospect. That 93 GH package was actually my intro to Petty (was 15 or so) but that song never clicked that much for me then, so I guess I never picked up on how popular it was.

"Deep Blue Day" is the Trainspotting selection. It's from Apollo, which for about 20 years has been my favorite ambient Eno – perfect for 9:30 p.m. weeknight writing.

kind of pointless to parse this for still-active huge artists, but kendrick lamar's top track on Spotify, by a long shot, is "HUMBLE." with almost 900K plays. "King Kunta" which I think of as his signature song, is way down at 250K. clearly i'm not really in touch with his hitmaking! but also clearly, it'll be years before he could properly have a "this thread" kind of song.

it got way more airplay iirc

https://www.billboard.com/music/kendrick-lamar/chart-history/hot-r-and-b-hip-hop-airplay

wow, yeah, pretty clear, thanks! i must have just been out of the loop last summer...

Ha I recently heard some younguns talking about the day Humble dropped as like the most momentous musical day of their lives, like now we know what it was like when you guys first heard Teen Spirit

I think the ilm reaction was like hmm this is okay

Queen has come up before but the recent ascent of "Don't Stop Me Now" seems a conspicuous example. Almost: beaten only by "Bohemian Rhapsody" over at Spotify nowadays, but I virtually never heard it anywhere for the first couple of decades of its existence.

("This Must Be The Place" is the other one, but I see y'all discussed that in the past.)

"Don't Stop Me Now" is a good one. I work pub quizzes and that song came up in an audio round (i.d. a song and artist from a 15-20 second clip) one time recently--I was genuinely surprised how many people nailed both, particularly in the company of newer and/or more obvious tracks in the round that they didn't.

Was it in a movie or commercial?

Yeah, I think its resurgence can be traced back to 2004 when it was used in the most memorable scene of Shaun of the Dead.

I had never heard "A Million Reasons" before checking Lady Gaga's Spotify profile, but it seems it's her... most streamed song?

unfortunately it's an overwrought, schmaltzy ballad - a missed opportunity

I wonder how much that has to do with the song having only been released after Spotify became one of the primary ways people hear new music, as opposed to e.g. the diamond-certified "Poker Face". (I've never knowingly heard it before either.)

yeah, that was my first thought too

Ugh, one that just occurred to me as a very real likelihood: Todd Rundgren - 'Bang the Drum All Day'

At 2.7M + 1.6M (for two different versions that appear in his 10 most streamed songs), Spotify thankfully has its play count well below "I Saw the Light" (10.8M) and "Hello It's Me" (5.7M + 4.7M for two different versions), although that's still higher than it should be.

ITunes store also seems to rank it #3.

yeah, gaga is one of those where songs from 2008 got bought on iTunes, not streamed on spotify. but bear in mind that spotify's ranking algorithm includes some recency/hotness special sauce, not just raw play count - if you dig in it looks like this:

Million Reasons 259m
Bad Romance 250m
Poker Face 249m
The Cure (??) 233m
Applause 187m
Telephone 182m
Just Dance 159m
Born This Way 130m
Do What U Want 117m
Paparazzi 101m

that still suggests some kind of VERY intense marketing on that last album that nonetheless completely escaped me. has she stayed huge in some region of the world whose pop charts don't align with the US's? but also comports perfectly with her peak stardom being pre-Spotify. her legacy songs, and the ones anybody would sing if you prompted them to produce a lady gaga numberb are all from 2008-2011.

"bang the drum" not being rundgren's really surprises me. it's the only thing by him you will ever hear on the radio at least in the US. my gut says it's a case of "song wasn't added to spotify until recently" but maybe "i saw the light" was on a soundtrack or something?

"bang the drum" not being rundgren's really surprises me. it's the only thing by him you will ever hear on the radio at least in the US.

I still hear "Hello, It's Me" and "I Saw The Light" frequently on the oldies station.

Yeah, I don't really trust Spotify play counts either, which is a reason I also checked iTunes for Rundgren.

I know I heard "Hello It's Me" a lot growing up without seeking it out but idk about recent oldies/AC formats. It's also been in a bunch of shows and movies.

how representative is iTunes though? I know a handful of people who purchased files there, personally always found it a bit of a joke... maybe bigger in the states

and yes, there must have been some kind of massive promotion for the latest gaga album that completely escaped me

(I actually didn't know that song was called "I Saw The Light" until now.)

iTunes was reported as accounting for 63% of the online music market and 29% of all music retail in 2012: https://www.cepro.com/article/itunes_dominates_download_market_streaming_audio_grows/

65-70% of the declining download market in 2016: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/26/spotify-music-download-apple-itunes-streaming-vinyl

wow

I gotta say, it's amazing to me that people will pay for Lady Gaga mp3s

"A Million Reasons" is terrific, GTF out!

here in Wisconsin "Bang on the Drum" is by far his most popular song but for other reasons. I don't know if I've ever actually heard it on the radio. "I Saw the Light", on the other hand...

bang on the drum was all over tv in carnival cruise ads for at least a decade

I thought it was an afternoon drive time staple. The whistle blows, you punch the clock, you get in your Chevy and roar down the highway smackin the console to that funky beat ol Todd is throwin down.

I don't know if they've been mentioned already but Public Enemy biggest song on Spotify is "Harder Than You Think"... I don't even know that song !
And their biggest hit is "Give It Up" apparently.

A bit like Tricky - the only thing I ever heard on the radio was "Black Steel"

Still, it did lead to http://freakytrigger.co.uk/hate/2000/07/black-steel-in-the-hour-of-chaos/ which is probably the best thing, ever.

I guess The Grateful Dead are too obvious for something like this? "Friend of the Devil" and "Casey Jones" both have a lot more Spotify streams than "Touch of Grey" (their only top 40 hit).

Those two songs were already FM radio mainstays by the time Touch of Grey came out

Yeah, and they’re probably included in a lot of default Spotify playlists.

Certainly, the concept of a 'hit' is a lot more slippery back then - songs like "Under My Thumb" and "Stairway to Heaven" were massive hits, even though they never charted.

see nearly every Hendrix radio staple

Still, it did lead to http://freakytrigger.co.uk/hate/2000/07/black-steel-in-the-hour-of-chaos/

it's not addressed to Mr Thaws, The Other Day, 1995

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/hate/2000/07/black-steel-in-the-hour-of-chaos/

Roffle. This is hilarious and OTM. Fuck that song.

take it to imgur, buddy

yeah, gaga is one of those where songs from 2008 got bought on iTunes, not streamed on spotify. but bear in mind that spotify's ranking algorithm includes some recency/hotness special sauce, not just raw play count - if you dig in it looks like this:

Million Reasons 259m
Bad Romance 250m
Poker Face 249m
The Cure (??) 233m
Applause 187m
Telephone 182m
Just Dance 159m
Born This Way 130m
Do What U Want 117m
Paparazzi 101m

couple things: 1) "Shallow" from A Star is Born now has 130 million Spotify plays! 2) how do you get those raw counts? and where can I get the iTunes numbers? 3) if we factor in Youtube counts we get another picture and probably we should since Youtube is actually the #1 music streaming service?

Bad Romance 982m
Poker Face 554m
Alejandro 347m
Applause 321m
Judas 313m
Telephone 301m

in spotify, you hover the cursor over the little "cell phone reception bars" icon next to any track.

aah I see

but then you kind of have to know what you're looking for, there's no way to sort by most plays?

nope, not that i know of.

the more popular tracks have more bars

NRBQ's "Magnet" has 2 million spins, ten times as much as the next most popular NRBQ songs.

Motley Crue's Kickstart My Heart has 100 million plays, which is nearly twice as any as Dr. Feelgood and Girls, Girls, Girls. Both charted in the top 10, while Kickstart peaked at #27.