Miley Cyrus had the highest-earning song on Spotify in 2023

NME

Following the launch of this year’s Spotify Wrapped, Miley Cyrus has been found to have the highest-earning song on the platform for 2023.

• READ MORE:  Streaming – what happens next? Artists demand “a shift in the way business is done”

The American pop star was revealed as topping the list of the highest-earning songs on Spotify this year, following a report carried out by Best Casino Sites (via Line Of Best Fit).

According to the newly-shared results, Cyrus was the artist who earned the highest amount from one song on her track ‘Flowers’. Arriving earlier this year, the track was featured on her ‘Endless Summer Vacation’ album and went on to become one of the biggest tracks of the year.

The album was the eighth studio album by Cyrus, and followed on from ‘Plastic Hearts’ which she shared in 2020.

The lead single of the LP, ‘Flowers’ also became the fastest song to surpass one billion streams on the platform – which it achieved in just 112 days – and currently stands at around 1.6billion streams on the platform.

As reported by the outlet, this means she has potentially earned £5,529,699 from royalties.

Coming in at second place is the hit track ‘Kill Bill’ by SZA, which was reported as earning approximately £5,101,002 and racked up 1.4billion plays and counting.

Third place is held by pop star Harry Styles with ‘As It Was’. According to the report, even though the song was released back in April 2022, it still made the list as it has been streamed more this year – going on to gather around 2.8billion streams and £9,778,269 in royalties.

As revealed in this year’s instalment of Spotify Wrapped, Taylor Swift, Drake, The Weeknd and Arctic Monkeys remain some of the most popular artists in the UK, and Dave, Miley Cyrus and SZA were among those who delivered some of the most popular tracks of the year.

‘SOS’ by SZA and ‘Harry’s House’ by Harry Styles were among the most popular albums of the year, as well as the iconic Arctic Monkeys album ‘AM’ and two albums by Taylor Swift, ‘Lover’ and ‘Midnights’.

A range of new features was been rolled out for the 2023 edition too, including a ‘Me in 2023’ section which revealed which one of the 12 listening styles best describes the way you listen, and a new section called ‘Sound Town’, which matched you to a city based on your listening and shared artist affinity.

Some of the most popular musicians of 2023 also recorded messages for fans on this year’s edition, including “Weird Al” Yankovic, who used his thank you message to take aim at what he sees as poor pay for artists by Spotify.

“Look, I’ll make this really quick,” Yankovic said in the video. “I just want to thank you all for your amazing support. It’s my understanding that I had over 80 million streams on Spotify this year so, if I’m doing the math right, that means I earned $12. Enough to get myself a nice sandwich at a restaurant.”

The streaming platform has received criticism for its pay model for musicians in the past, and this came to a head earlier this year when the platform made the controversial decision to change their royalty model. The new structure meant that songs won’t start earning money until they are streamed 1,000 times.

Despite these changes, Spotify reported better-than-expected third-quarter profits and subscriber gains.

Following the criticism about pay for artists by the platform, last month it was revealed that Spotify will no longer provide its services in Uruguay. This came following the country’s copyright law that would require “equitable remuneration” for artists.

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