Records are meant to be broken. It’s just how it goes. It’s especially sweet however, if you can break one of your old marks rather than having someone else come along and top what you’ve done. One person getting to experience that bit of satisfaction today is Justin Bieber, who leant some vocals to Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee on their earth-shaking hit song “Despacito” and helped unseat his own single “Sorry” as the most-streamed song of all-time in the process.
In just six months since the track first appeared, it has has managed to rack up a truly staggering 4.38 billion plays on the various streaming platforms. “Despacito” has racked up 1.183 billion streams on Spotify alone and the official video has become the fastest clip ever to surpass the two billion views mark. With the Summer only heating up, you can probably expect those numbers to grow too.
“Streaming is a connector for audiences worldwide and it has helped my music reach every corner of the planet,” Luis Fonsi said in a statement. “It is truly an honor that ‘Despacito’ is now the most streamed song in history.”
It is true that streaming is accounting for more and more people’s music consumption. In a recent report, Nielsen noted that “on-demand audio streams have reached over 184 billion streams so far in 2017, a considerable 62.4% increase over the same time period in 2016.” Platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal are becoming part of the fabric of people’s lives, and you can expect more marks like this one to be set in the not-too-distant future.
