The success of a Bollywood vocalist, Arijit Singh has reached new heights among his large, international fan base. Singh has made his way to the top 10 most followed artists on Spotify and his fan base continues to grow through the momentum of his global recognition.
Part of the reason for Singh’s popularity is back-to-back chart-busting singles that rival the popularity of current international singers and rappers. Arijit Singh is the first-ever solo Asian as well as Indian music artist to achieve this recognition. According to Spotify, he was the most followed Asian solo music artist in the years 2020 and 2021. This also signals Spotify’s interest in reaching this high growth market. The ‘Kesariya’ singer has found his songs on millions of playlists. Songs like ‘Tum Hi ho’, ‘Dil Samhal Zara’ and ‘Gerua’ continue to receive millions of streams according to Chartmetric.
With the growth of his international fan base, the singer is experiencing massive success, resulting in him being the 7th most-followed artist on Spotify among global rappers and Pop stars – only one spot behind Hip Hop star Eminem. With 59.7 million followers, this slots Singh one spot higher than Taylor Swift, with Bad Bunny in ninth place. Surprisingly, Singh is even ranked higher than BTS at number 10 with 55 million. The list is led by Ed Sheeran with over 103 million followers. Ariana Grande and Billie Eilish are featured in the second and third positions respectively. Drake has taken the fourth position with over 67 million followers and Justin Bieber is in 5th position with 66 million followers on Spotify.
One fact that is even more mind bending is that the singer’s listener base is divided among various platforms such as JioSaavn, Gaana, Wynk Music, and Spotify. Considering that artists like Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny are consistently placed due to major label pushing, it perhaps shows a future audience trend as music from within Asia continues to go mainstream. Regardless, in this case, the algorithms seem to be working in his favor.