What Is The Most Streamed Musical Of All Time?

On The Table Read Magazine, “the best entertainment magazine in the UK“, we ask what is the most streamed musical of all time, and check out research from experts at Slot Tracker to find out.

From the West End in London, to Broadway in New York where 12.28 million enthusiasts attended the 2022/23 season, musicals are beloved around the world.

Slot Tracker wanted to find out which musical is the most popular, so did some research with Spotify data to work out the most streamed musical playlists in the world, and the most loved musical playlists and songs of all time!

The Most Streamed Musical Of All Time

Ranking	Name of the musical	Album streams
1.	Hamilton	5,658,081,545
2.	Mamma Mia!	1,587,994,591
3.	Dear Evan Hansen	845,678,685
4.	Wicked	535,180,319
5.	SIX: The Musical	381,161,427
6.	Hadestown	281,967,174
7.	The Phantom of the Opera	265,168,200
8.	The Book of Mormon	239,491,089
9.	Legally Blonde	187,594,401
10.	Newsies the Musical	186,133,730

Hamilton

Slot Tracker can reveal that ‘Hamilton’ (2015) is the most streamed musical album with over 5.6 billion streams. Not only does Hamilton have the most streamed album, but the hit “Alexander Hamilton” is also the most streamed song, with over a staggering 260 million streams (263,278,557) on Spotify. As the opening number, the song serves to set the stage for the story of Hamilton in a fusion of different musical genres.

Hamilton is a sung-through musical about the life of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. It is based on the 2004 biography Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. The musical was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also starred in the original Broadway cast.

Hamilton tells the story of Hamilton’s rise from poverty to prominence as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The musical explores Hamilton’s relationships with his wife, Eliza, his rival, Aaron Burr, and his political enemies.

Hamilton is notable for its use of hip hop, rap, R&B, and other genres of music. The musical also features a diverse cast of actors, which has been praised for its representation of people of color.

Hamilton has been a critical and commercial success. It has won numerous awards, including 11 Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. The musical has also been seen by millions of people around the world.

The musical’s most streamed song is ‘Alexander Hamilton’ with over 263 million streams, almost double the streams of ‘Mamma Mia!’s most streamed song ‘Lay all your love on me’.

Mama Mia!

‘Mamma Mia!’ takes second place with 1,587,994,591 streams.

Mamma Mia! is a jukebox musical based on the songs of Swedish pop group ABBA. The musical tells the story of a young woman named Sophie who is about to get married on a Greek island. Sophie doesn’t know who her father is, so she invites three men from her mother’s past to the wedding, hoping that one of them is her father.

The musical is set on a Greek island and features a cast of characters who are all connected to the island and to each other. The music is a mix of ABBA’s greatest hits, and the songs are used to tell the story and to develop the characters.

Mamma Mia! has been a huge success since it premiered in London in 1999. It has been translated into 15 languages and has been performed in over 50 countries. The musical has also been made into a film, which was released in 2008.

‘Lay all your love on me’ is the musical’s most popular song with 151,080,454 streams. ‘Mamma Mia!’ is so popular due to its universal appeal to both younger and older generations and the musical’s encouragement of audience participation through sing-along moments.

Dear Evan Hansen

Dear Evan Hansen ranks third, with 845,678,685 streams – almost 45% more than Wicked.

Dear Evan Hansen is a musical with music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, and a book by Steven Levenson. The musical tells the story of Evan Hansen, a high school senior with social anxiety disorder. When a classmate, Connor Murphy, commits suicide, Evan finds a letter that Connor wrote to him and decides to pretend that they were friends. Evan’s lie quickly spirals out of control, and he finds himself caught up in a web of deception.

The musical premiered at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in July 2015, and it opened on Broadway in December 2016. Dear Evan Hansen has won numerous awards, including six Tony Awards, a Grammy Award, and an Olivier Award. The musical has also been seen by millions of people around the world.

“Waving Through a Window” is the most popular song on the album, with more than 167 million streams (167,458,485).

Methodology

1. Slot Tracker were keen to discover the most streamed musical of all time
2. To do so, a seedlist of the most popular musicals was taken from multiple sources such as broadway, ranker and Wikipedia
3.     The experts then utilised Spotify data to collect the number of streams per album, by noting down the number of streams per song and combining them to reveal the number of streams per album.
4. The results were then ranked to reveal the most streamed musical of all time.
5.   For additional data, they also collected the top ten songs per musical album, and used the open Spotify API tool to track features for the top two most streamed songs from each musical album. These include danceability, energy, key, loudness, speechiness, acousticness, instrumentalness, liveness, valence and tempo.

 

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