Did Bad bunny surpass Taylor Swift in Spotify?
Executive summary
Spotify’s 2025 Wrapped names Bad Bunny the platform’s global No. 1 artist with about 19.8 billion streams, ending Taylor Swift’s two‑year global streak; Spotify still lists Swift as the No. 1 artist in the U.S. for 2025 [1] [2] [3]. Multiple news outlets report Bad Bunny “dethroned” or “overtook” Swift globally, and Spotify itself points to album release timing as a factor [2] [4].
1. Bad Bunny reclaimed the global crown — the numbers
Spotify’s year‑end Wrapped places Bad Bunny atop its global list for 2025 with roughly 19.8 billion streams, making him the platform’s most‑streamed global artist this year and ending Taylor Swift’s global run that began in 2023 [2] [3] [5].
2. Taylor Swift remains the U.S. leader — the geographic split matters
News coverage stresses that the Spotify rankings differ by market: while Bad Bunny is No. 1 globally, Taylor Swift is still Spotify’s top artist in the United States for 2025; the U.S. top list places Swift ahead of artists such as Drake and Billie Eilish [1] [6] [5].
3. Why Bad Bunny rose: timing, albums and global reach
Analysts and reporting note Spotify’s own acknowledgement that release dates helped drive Bad Bunny’s ascent — his album Debí Tirar Más Fotos arrived in January and became the platform’s most‑streamed album of 2025, which boosted his worldwide totals [1] [4] [5]. Coverage highlights that a significant share of Bad Bunny’s streams came from outside Latin America, underscoring his global penetration [7].
4. Context: it’s not a permanent takeover but a year‑by‑year metric
This is Spotify’s annual Wrapped snapshot, reflecting streams within the year. Bad Bunny has topped Spotify’s global list multiple times previously and Swift had led in 2023 and 2024, so the top spot has shifted between the two before — Spotify’s lists are ephemeral measures of a calendar year’s listening, not a lifetime ranking [5] [2].
5. What “surpassed” means in this conversation
When outlets say Bad Bunny “surpassed” or “dethroned” Taylor Swift, they refer specifically to Spotify’s global most‑streamed‑artist ranking for 2025 and the raw stream totals reported by Spotify — not to universal measures across all platforms, touring income, awards, or cultural influence beyond Spotify’s dataset [2] [3] [4]. Available sources do not mention cross‑platform comparisons or Spotify’s internal formula beyond noting stream counts and album timing.
6. Competing narratives and potential agendas
Mainstream outlets uniformly report Spotify’s data, but some coverage adds interpretive frames: industry pieces link the Wrapped result to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime booking and to marketing/label strategy [8]. Fan‑oriented reporting emphasizes cultural significance and language crossover [7]. Those angles serve different interests — promotional benefit for artists and platforms, and explanatory narratives for readers — and stem from the same Spotify data [8] [7].
7. What listeners should keep in mind about Wrapped data
Wrapped reflects Spotify user behavior across a year and can be influenced by release timing, playlist placement, regional popularity and catalog consumption. Spotify’s campaign also changes features year to year, which can shape how users perceive results; reporting notes both feature changes and public reactions to prior editions [1] [2].
8. Bottom line for your original question
Yes: according to Spotify’s 2025 Wrapped and consistent reporting across major outlets, Bad Bunny surpassed Taylor Swift for Spotify’s global most‑streamed artist in 2025 (about 19.8 billion streams); Taylor Swift remained No. 1 on Spotify in the U.S. market for the same year [2] [6] [3].
Limitations: this account uses only Spotify’s public Wrapped data as reported by the cited outlets; available sources do not mention other streaming platforms’ totals or non‑Spotify metrics for comparing overall artist dominance [1] [2].