3 of the biggest artists in the world recently (re)released new albums. I used Spotify play count data to track which album was the most popular in its first week since being released.
Adele Won. And She Won Big.
Click on the Day Selector under the title on the chart to change play count for each of the first 7 days, including the total of the 7 days. The total stream numbers are the average per track on the album to account for the length of each album.
When I first had the idea to start tracking these three albums I expected pretty different results. I figured "Equals" and "30" would be a lot closer together and "Red (Taylor's Version)", being a re-release and not 100% new tracks, would be a reasonably sized margin below them both.
As it turns out, Adele came close to doing the same number of Spotify streams as Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift combined, and "Red (Taylor's Version)" outperformed "Equals" both overall and on each of the first 5 days until it tailed off to a greater extent by the end of the first week.
It took until day 5 for streams of "30" to drop below what "Red (Taylor's Version)" did on its first day and until day 6 to drop below the first day play count of "Equals".
Everyone knew that Adele's first album in six years would be huge, but by comparing it to other major releases just weeks earlier puts into better context just how huge it really was.
Which Albums Retained Its Listeners Best?
I also looked at how big of a drop in listens each album had from day 1 to day 7. Although "30" was the album by far with the most listens, it was also the album with the biggest drop in streams by the end of the week. Which is somewhat to be expected with it being the most popular album.
The second day drop for "30" and "Equals" were pretty similar at -35.07% and -35.67% respectively, however, the day 2 decrease for "Red (Taylor's Version)" was stronger at -28.91%.
What's interesting is that all three albums had a rise in listens from day 3 (Sunday) to day 4 (Monday), with "30" experiencing the biggest increase at 9.89%, likely helped by Adele's ITV special the night before.
Although, "Equals" started off with the lowest number of streams, it did have the lowest percentage drop by the end of its first week, dropping 53.07% compared to 58.30% for "Red (Taylor's Version)" and 61.34% for "30".
What Were The Most Popular Tracks On Each Album?
There isn't a whole lot else for me to add to the charts here.
What's more interesting though is when we combine these 3 charts to show the most played tracks during the first week since the release of the album.
"Easy On Me" smoked everything despite being out for a month prior to the album release. However, the most played non-single track is the 10 minute version of "All Too Well" by Taylor Swift. After that though, the next four tracks all belong to Adele with "Oh My God" during its first week doing comparable numbers to Ed Sheeran's lead singles "Shivers" and "Bad Habits".
Of the 15 most played tracks during the first week of the album's release, over half of them belonged to Adele, with four of the remaining seven coming from "Red (Taylor's Version)", three of them re-recorded tracks.
How Does This Translate Into Earnings via Spotify?
Artists make around £0.0033 per stream of their songs on Spotify. For an artist doing fairly modest streaming numbers this doesn't really add up to a whole lot but for the likes of Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift and Adele, their Spotify earnings can skyrocket in a very short amount of time upon the release of a new album.
The above chart (which you can toggle between £, $ and € at the top) shows you how much each album made just from the streams within its first week.
Here, Taylor Swift comes out on top due to "Red (Taylor's Version) having 30 tracks compared to 14 on "Equals" and 12 on "30". Even just over £500k for "Equals" within its first week of release is certainly nothing to be scoffed at, especially when you factor in that "Bad Habits" and "Shivers" had already made over £2.6m prior to the release of "Equals".
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