Since its launch as a humble Swedish start-up in 2008, Spotify has grown to become the biggest streaming platform in the world. And love it or hate it, Spotify is an important metric of success in the modern music industry. Drake became the first artist to achieve a billion streams for a single song, with One Dance in 2016. Since then, a total of 446 songs have passed that same milestone, with two – The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights and Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You surpassing an incredible 3 billion plays each.
When it comes to rock music, and especially legacy rock music, there are questions of demographic and preference at play. Nearly two thirds of Spotify’s users are aged under 35 and rock fans are more likely than others to listen to traditional radio and music on physical formats. The average age of the Spotify user is creeping up though and streaming is now by far the most common method of music consumption across all combined age groups.
Queen are the best-performing rock band to have joined Spotify’s Billions Club. The 2011 remaster of Bohemian Rhapsody is currently sitting pretty at nearly 2.2 billion streams and they also have another four tracks in the list. Elsewhere, AC/DC have three billion-streamers in Back In Black, Highway To Hell and Thunderstruck. Notable by their absence are monsters of rock like the Rolling Stones, whose best-performing track Paint It Black is just shy of 938 million streams, the Foo Fighters (with Everlong on more than 886m) and Led Zeppelin (846m for Stairway To Heaven).
Here are all the rock songs that have passes a billion Spotify streams as of 18 July 2023.
Rock and metal songs with over one billion streams on Spotify
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody (2.192bn)
Twenty One Pilots - Stressed Out (1.981bn)
Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit (1.684bn)
Queen - Don’t Stop Me Now (1.642bn)
Linkin Park - In The End (1.618bn)
Journey - Don’t Stop Believin’ (1.600bn)
Queen - Another One Bites The Dust (1.572bn)
Twenty One Pilots - Heathens (1.558bn)
Guns N’ Roses - Sweet Child O’ Mine (1.548bn)
Twenty One Pilots - Ride (1.505bn)
TOTO - Africa (1.479bn)
Panic! At The Disco - High Hopes (1.427bn)
Måneskin - Beggin’ (1.364bn)
Queen - Under Pressure (1.356bn)
Linkin Park - Numb (1.356bn)
Eagles - Hotel California (1.351bn)
White Stripes - Seven Nation Army (1.350bn)
AC/DC - Back In Black (1.295bn)
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams (1.284bn)
The Goo Goo Dolls - Iris (1.28bn)
Bon Jovi - Livin’ On A Prayer (1.275bn)
AC/DC - Highway To Hell (1.272bn)
AC/DC - Thunderstruck (1.212bn)
Metallica - Enter Sandman (1.144bn)
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under The Bridge (1.157bn)
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication (1.154bn)
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Have You Ever Seen The Rain? (1.139bn)
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Sweet Home Alabama (1.125bn)
Queen - We Will Rock You (1.082bn)
Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger (1.073bn)
System Of A Down - Chop Suey! (1.067bn)
The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun (1.048bn)
Nirvana - Come As You Are (1.032bn)
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son (1.030bn)
Fall Out Boy - Centuries (1.023bn)