BILLIONS CLUB: Drake (8/372)

BILLIONS CLUB

Drake (9/372)*

Total: 28/372

7.5% of the total  

* Work is counted under the total for Rihanna, but I adjusted Drake's total to 9 instead of 8 (but the total remains 28/372 because that song is counted under Rihanna.)

       It's also worth tracking the songs from these artists that are CLOSE to crossing the billion play threshold- Drake is the first of these artists to have songs in that category- which says something about Ed Sheeran and Post Malone- that they don't have any songs in that category.  Both Scorpion and Views have songs that have already crossed the threshold of one billion streams AND songs that are close- which I'm going to put at 940,000,000+- anything more than 940 million views.  I started a new playlist BILLIONS + HUNDRED MILLIONS on Spotify to keep track.

      It seems like this question of whether an artist that already has a song above one billion streams has any other songs that are close is an important way to distinguish the trajectory of artists in this club.  So even though the total number of tracks seems low for an artist the magnitude of Drake, the fact that I count three songs that are poised to cross the billion play threshold at some point in the future in some sense puts him above both Post Malone and Ed Sheeran. 

   For example, Going Bad, his collaboration with Meek Mill off of Meek's 2018 album Championships, just crossed the billion play threshold this week.   This is significant not only for Drake but more importantly for Meek Mill- whose popularity is raised an order of magnitude by having a Drake feature on this particular song.  Meek's album track average on Championships maybe barely scrapes 20,000,000 a track.  It's worth noting that even at the most prolific levels, the gap between billion stream hits and catalog/album tracks is so substantial that it almost seems insane if you stop to think about it.

   Just to track back to Ed Sheeran for a minute by comparison- his 2014 deluxe edition of X has two songs with over two billion streams, but the same record also has three tracks under one hundred million streams- which really seems like the bare minimum for an Ed Sheeran track.  The next highest streaming track after the two, two billion stream tracks only has 875 million- which is really low compared to two billion.  

   Or, to compare the other already discussed BILLIONS CLUB member, Post Malone, his 2018 record, beerbongs & bentleys has one track with two billion streams and two tracks with one billion streams, but most of the rest are at 200-300 million streams.   The next highest track on that record only has 914 million streams.

 

    So that is one difference that I can already see- the BILLIONS CLUB artist with static membership based on past achievement, and those with continuing momentum.