Drake becomes the first artist past 140 billion Spotify streams

Drake has become the first artist in Spotify's history to pass 140 billion streams on the service, according to Kworb's tracking. Nobody else is close on that measure: Taylor Swift sits second on 130 billion, Bad Bunny third on 128 billion, The Weeknd on 97 billion and Justin Bieber on 80 billion.

The daily rate is the more telling number. He is drawing roughly 57 million streams a day, which also puts him top of that category, and the total is as much a function of a decade of back catalog being replayed as of anything new. Every year he releases something, the older records get pulled along with it.

This year he has released three albums: ICEMAN, HABIBTI and MAID OF HONOUR. ICEMAN is now eligible for double platinum certification from the RIAA in the United States, meaning it has moved more than 2 million units, and MusicSuey covered the run it had on the Billboard 200 through the spring.

A fourth may be coming. He posted a picture of a CD case reading FEAR OF MISSING OUT, and the FOMO teases have been read as an album title, a tour name, a documentary and a set of music videos for the ICEMAN trilogy, depending on who is guessing. Nothing has been confirmed.

He has also been photographed in an Iron Man suit on what appeared to be a video shoot in Toronto, which has not clarified anything. What is certain is that whatever arrives next will land on a listener base already large enough to make the streaming record move on its own.

The scale of it is what makes the milestone worth noting rather than the round number. A 10 billion stream gap over the second-placed artist on the biggest streaming service is a structural advantage in hip-hop and outside it, and it compounds each time he puts out a record. He most recently turned up as a guest on Karol G's album track Ahi.