Blinding Lights or As It Was… What Was Spotify Wrapped 2022’s Top-Grossing song?

On The Table Read, “the best entertainment magazine in the UK“, Spotify Wrapped has revealed our listening habits in 2022… but which was the highest grossing song of the year?

Spotify Wrapped 2022

Every year, the highly-anticipated release of Spotify Wrapped takes over social media, with millions of users unabashedly revealing snapshots of their listening habits.

Experts at OnlineCasinos.co.uk felt inspired by this trend to find out how much the top-streaming artists of 2022 could have earned in royalties by taking the total play count of Spotify’s top 50 tracks globally and inserting it into a royalties calculator, Music Gateway, to uncover each track’s estimated earnings. 

Spotify Wrapped Highest Grossing Songs

Rank	Track	Artist	Total number of plays	Approximate global listening time (in years)	Total Estimated Royalty Earnings (£)
1	Blinding Lights	The Weeknd	3,276,095,650	20,741	£11,269,769.04
2	Stay (with Justin Bieber)	The Kid LAROI, Justin Bieber	2,243,561,004	10,066	£7,717,849.85
3	Heat Waves	Glass Animals	2,136,660,694	16,168	£7,350,112.79
4	Watermelon Sugar	Harry Styles	2,020,898,252	11,142	£6,951,889.99
5	Sweater Weather	The Neighbourhood	1,840,275,005	13,995	£6,330,546.02
6	good 4 u	Olivia Rodrigo	1,675,419,357	9,460	£5,763,442.59
7	As It Was	Harry Styles	1,603,198,750	8,473	£5,515,003.70
8	INDUSTRY BABY (feat. Jack Harlow)	Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow	1,587,895,264	10,657	£5,462,359.71
9	Bad Habits	Ed Sheeran	1,338,222,969	9,795	£4,603,487.01
10	Cold Heart – PNAU Remix	Elton John, Dua Lipa, Pnau	1,257,611,378	8,081	£4,326,183.14

Blinding Lights

The Weeknd’s 2019 hit single Blinding Lights continues to reign supreme as Spotify’s top-grossing song of 2022 according to the experts at OnlineCasinos.co.uk. After inspiring a TikTok dance craze during lockdown, the 80s-tinged track is the fastest in Spotify history to reach three billion streams, potentially earning the Canadian artist a whopping £11,269,769 from royalties.

The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber

Clocking over 2.24 billion plays to date, Stay by The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber comes in second with an estimated royalty earning of £7,717,849. The Australian rapper’s first chart-topper has been listened to for over 10,000 years collectively on Spotify!

Glass Animals

In third place is Glass Animal’s Heat Waves, which became an earworm thanks to a slowed-down version of the song that went viral on TikTok, it reached 2.13 billion streams and potentially generated £7,350,112 in royalty earnings.

Harry Styles

Taking both fourth and seventh places, Harry Style’s 2019 single Watermelon Sugar earned an estimated £6,951,889, while As It Was – released only this year – sits at the seventh spot, earning approxiamtely £5,515,003 after amassing an impressive 1.6 billion plays so far.

Highest Earning Albums

Rank	Album	Artist	Combined total number of plays	Total Estimated Royalty Earnings (£)
1	Un Verano Sin Ti	Bad Bunny	10,224,755,147	£35,173,157.71
2	Sour	Olivia Rodrigo	8,489,425,507	£29,203,623.74
3	Planet Her	Doja Cat	6,059,396,620	£20,844,324.37
4	Harry’s House	Harry Styles	3,836,048,700	£13,196,007.53
5	=	Ed Sheeran	3,245,194,357	£11,163,468.59

The coveted top spot as most streamed album, as well as highest-earning, goes to Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti . With a combined total play count of 10.2 billion, the album adds an eye-popping £35,173,157 to the Puerto Rican star’s potential wealth.

Dubbed breakup album of the decade, Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour comes in second place, earning the star an estimated £29,203,623 from royalties. Rounding off the top three is Doja Cat’s Planet Her, bagging the American rapper a mind-blowing £20,844,324 in royalty earnings.

Methodology

1. OnlineCasinos.co.uk were keen to uncover the top-grossing songs and albums on Spotify this year.
2. The experts first acquired the number of streams for Spotify’s top 50 tracks globally, released in its 2022 Wrapped report.
3. They then inserted the figures into a royalties calculator, musicgateway.com, to obtain each song’s estimated earnings on the platform.

a.     The earnings were noted down in GBP (£) and were converted to Euro (€) and US Dollar ($) on a currency conversion site, xe.com. The exchange rate was based on the rate on November 30th 2022: 1 GBP = 1.1580231 EURO, 1 GBP = 1.2050089 USD.

4. The estimated figures were ranked in descending order to determine the artist potentially racking in the most from Spotify.
5. The same method was repeated for the top albums of 2022 to unveil the highest-earning album on Spotify this year.
6. Subsequently, the approximate time spent listening to each song was obtained by multiplying the duration of each track and its number of streams.
7. All data was collected from November 30th 2022 to December 1st 2022 and is accurate as of then.

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