Spotify Earnings Map: The Biggest Hits from Every Country in 2025

In 2025, the music industry is at a turning point. Streaming has become the lifeblood of global music, with platforms like Spotify connecting millions of listeners to artists worldwide. Hits now travel instantly, breaking borders in a single playlist, but this growth raises challenges: fairly compensating artists, balancing global virality with local culture, and navigating AI-generated music. Spotify’s role as both gatekeeper and talent incubator has never been more pivotal.

Songs can become global phenomena in minutes, amplified across social media. This inspired TradingPlatforms to examine global streaming trends with a twist: instead of only the most-streamed songs worldwide, we focused on the top tracks by local artists in each country. Using data from Kworb and Spotify, we mapped each country’s most-streamed song, tracking total streams and revenue globally and domestically. We also collected historical data, from pre-1960s classics to today’s viral hits, to see how local and global appeal translates into real financial impact.

Key takeaways

• The highest-earning song worldwide is The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’, which has generated $20.3 million on Spotify, yet only 3.14% of that revenue comes from Canada, the artist’s home country.
• New releases can generate massive revenue almost instantly, rivalling older hits in annualised terms. Jimin’s ‘Who’ (2024) brought in $8.16 million in its first year, coming close to Alan Walker’s ‘Faded’, which accumulated $9 million over a decade since its 2014 release.
• Smaller markets deliver outsized streaming returns. Colombia’s ‘Luna’ by Feid generated $5.68 million despite only 10.8% of its streams coming from local listeners, while Belgium’s ‘Where Are You Now’ by Lost Frequencies earned over $6 million with just 1.96% domestic contribution.

Streaming revenue today is increasingly defined by a widening divide between global dominance and local loyalty. Mega-hits like The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ have amassed over $20 million in Spotify revenue, with just 3% coming from Canada, proof that international audiences, not homegrown fans, now drive the bulk of profits. In contrast, domestic chart-toppers such Indonesia’s ‘Runtuh’ and India’s ‘Tujhe Kitna Chahne Lage’ derive more than 85% of their streams locally, showing how concentrated national fanbases can sustain high earnings even with limited global traction. The Latin and Reggaeton scene mirrors this trend: Mexico’s ‘Que Onda’ generated nearly $2.3 million from domestic listeners alone, over half of its total income.

At the same time, the speed of monetisation has accelerated. Recent viral releases like Korea’s Who and Chile’s ‘Gata Only’ (both 2024) produced multi-million-dollar revenues within months, often outpacing decade-old classics on an annualised basis. Meanwhile, enduring hits such as Australia’s Riptide or Sweden’s Wake Me Up illustrate the long tail of streaming economics, lower yearly returns but steady accumulation over time. Together, the data highlights a new reality: whether through borderless virality or deep-rooted local appeal, streaming has become one of the most efficient and immediate revenue engines in modern music.

Spotify’s listener charts reveal a balance between longevity and momentum. The Weeknd sits firmly at the top with 117.7 million monthly listeners, narrowly ahead of Bruno Mars and Taylor Swift, both now crossing the rare 100-million threshold. Other veteran artists to have achieved this feat include Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, who remain close behind – proof that classic catalogues still command global attention even without constant new releases.

Yet the platform’s dynamics are shifting: Sabrina Carpenter, with 76 million monthly listeners, has climbed into the same league as decade-long chart fixtures, showing how quickly viral traction can rewrite the hierarchy of global pop.

Spotify’s all-time charts read like a time capsule of modern music consumption, where viral newcomers stand shoulder to shoulder with songs older than streaming itself. Once again, The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’ dominates the leaderboard, but the chase is on: Billie Eilish’s ‘Birds of a Feather’, released in 2024, has already surpassed 3 billion streams, proving how fast online fandom can elevate a new release to near-classic status.

What’s equally striking is how far nostalgia still travels. Queen, The Police, and even Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’, recorded more than sixty years ago, continue to generate millions from Gen Z listeners. Spotify’s real power lies in collapsing musical timelines: the same algorithm that propels a viral hit to billions of plays also breathes new life into old favourites, turning the platform into both a launchpad for new icons and a preservation engine for the global soundtrack.

Spotify Most Streamed Songs Released in 2025

Data Sources: Kworb, Spotify

Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico’s superstar, dominates the 2025 Spotify charts with six tracks surpassing half a billion streams, underscoring the global influence of Latin music on today’s playlists. Familiar icons like Taylor Swift are notably absent, though that may soon change, as her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, released on October 3, 2025, has already shattered records worldwide, becoming the fastest-selling album in U.S. history and topping charts in 18 countries within its first week.

Meanwhile, newcomers like HUNTR/X (US) and Jin from South Korea’s K-pop scene are racking up tens of millions of daily Streams streams, showing how concentrated fan engagement and social media hype can launch songs to instant global prominence. By contrast, legends like Lady Gaga remain relevant but appear only once on the list, hinting at the shifting dynamics of global music consumption, where viral momentum often outweighs long-term legacy.

Streaming’s New Frontier

2025 has cemented streaming as the central nervous system of global music. Platforms like Spotify no longer just distribute songs, they shape careers, fan engagement, and revenue flows on an unprecedented scale. Hits can emerge overnight, fueled by social media buzz and concentrated fanbases, while classic tracks continue to earn steadily, often decades after their release.

At the same time, the rise of viral-first artists and international acts illustrates how streaming has flattened traditional hierarchies. New artists can achieve tens of millions of streams in days, while established stars maintain relevance more through catalogue strength than constant output. Nostalgia also remains a potent driver, as songs from past decades continue to earn millions through playlist circulation.

Together, these trends reveal a music industry in flux: one where immediacy, global reach, and fan intensity define success, yet local cultural resonance and the enduring power of classic hits remain just as vital. Streaming has become both the engine of modern music virality and the guardian of its history, signalling that artists, labels, and listeners alike are navigating a world where the lines between old and new, local and global, are more blurred, and lucrative, than ever before.

Methodology:

The team at TradingPlatforms sourced data from Kworb to identify the most-streamed songs in each country, working down the charts until a local artist appeared. Kworb provides coverage for 76 countries, but Andorra, El Salvador, and the United Arab Emirates were excluded from this analysis because no local artists ranked among the top streams, leaving a total of 73 countries.

For each track, we calculated global and domestic revenue by multiplying streams by $0.004, based on Spotify’s reported payout range of $0.003-$0.005 per stream. Beyond the country-level data, we also compiled information on the most-streamed songs and artists worldwide, as well as historical top tracks spanning past years and decades, applying the same revenue calculations. Finally, we examined current 2025 trends, focusing exclusively on newly released tracks to generate a ranking that highlights which songs are achieving immediate streaming dominance.

Countries’ Most Streamed Songs on Spotify by Local Artists