It's that time of year again. Specifically, it's almost the end of the year. And what a year it has been.
That first line was just to demonstrate how many year-end lists you're about to encounter on the Internet around this time. Spotify, the music streaming service that seems to always be in the news these days, has released one of the more interesting ones, its Year in Music list for 2014.
What was the world listening to this year? A lot of Ed Sheeran, apparently. The British singer-songwriter garnered 860 million individual listens this year, making him Spotify's most streamed artist of 2014. Sheeran's sophomore album X was also streamed more than any other album globally this year with 430 million listens.
It's easy to see why Spotify listeners wanted a little Sheeran in their lives. The ginger troubadour blew up this year, thanks to his singles "Sing" and "Don't," which cracked the Top 20 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. He was nominated for the 2014 Grammy award for "Best New Artist." Sheeran also had his very own documentary called Nine Days and Nights of Ed Sheeran premiere on MTV in June. And he just performed at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. Poor guy.
If you somehow avoided listening to Sheeran on Spotify this year, you probably heard at least one of these other artists, albums or songs. The most popular female artist on Spotify this year was Katy Perry, who scored another No.1 album in 2014 with Prism. Coldplay, who also had a No.1 album with its latest effort Ghost Stories, was the top group on Spotify. Pharrell Williams' "Happy" claimed the top spot as the most streamed song around the world.
Taylor Swift, whose fifth studio album 1989 was the biggest-selling album of the year, is conspicuously absent from any of these lists. Or maybe not. The artist did famously cut ties from the music streaming service in early November, pulling her entire music catalog from Spotify, which was met with much controversy.
"The top lists are an accurate reflection of what was listened to this year, there was absolutely no meddling or removing of her from the list," a Spotify spokesperson told The Verge via email. "Taylor simply didn't make it into the top five."
So it looks like Spotify didn't just remove Swift from the list out of revenge or bitterness. But I know that we're still not over the whole ordeal.
