Queen Are Most-Played Rock Band on Radio Around the World
Queen is the most-played rock band on radio around the world, and the fourth most-played artist across all genres, analytics service Viberate reported.
The company said its observations prove that the rock genre is “resurrected” and provided evidence for its conclusion.
“We crunched the annual numbers behind every relevant music and social media channel, from Spotify to Beatport and TikTok, and drew conclusions regarding music industry trends and markets in 2022,” the report said. Around 50 million tracks and videos were included in their scan, along with 500 festivals, in an effort to help developing artists establish themselves in the modern industry.
Viberate calculated that rock was the fourth-biggest genre on Spotify with 31.8 billion streams in 2021, compared with 145 billion for pop, 83.2 billion for hip-hop and 55.9 billion for Latin. On YouTube, rock was also fourth-biggest with 8.9 billion views, compared with 71 billion for pop, 54.9 billion for Latin and 44.9 billion for hip-hop.
But analysis of over 24,000 radio stations in 150 countries around the world proved that rock was the second-biggest genre in the medium with 79.7 million plays, compared with 141 million plays for pop. Queen came fourth in the list of most-played artists, after Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa and the Weeknd.
“The artists who did best in 2021 took more care in cultivating their audience,” Viberate said. “Creating special, fanfirst approaches, be it in the form of promotion, merch, special access or something else, will drive an artist’s success.” In addition, the report argued that rock was enjoying a resurgence thanks to artists not normally associated with the genre including Olivia Rodrigo and Machine Gun Kelly, the rise of Italian band Maneskin and “punk rock making waves on TikTok.”
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