ST. JULIAN’S, Malta — Although a night at the theater is not on the docket for everyone’s weekend plans as it once was, the joy of sitting before a brightly lit stage to take in a cast’s theatrics is still a treat for many. From the dazzling brilliance of Broadway plays to the historic open-air design of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, experiencing a live musical production is not something you forget. In fact, many continue to revel in the magic of it all after the fact by streaming their favorite soundtracks a home.
However, some songs just stick with us more than others — leading fans to play them over and over… and over again! With that in mind, researchers with Slot Tracker sought out to find which musicals are the stars of the streaming universe on Spotify. By using data from listeners of musical playlists, the results also provide a look at what the most loved musicals are as well.
With the overwhelming reaction from theater fans new and old, it is no surprise that “Hamilton” takes the cake as the number one most streamed musical of all time on Spotify with over 5.6 billion streams — three times more than “Mamma Mia!” in second place.
The musical’s most popular song is the opener, “Alexander Hamilton,” which boasts over 263 million streams alone.
In 2015, “Hamilton” brought a burst of fandom with it as it hit the stage. Fans loved the mixture of contemporary music styles used to retell the historical events in the play. Lin-Manuel Miranda revolutionized the theatrical world with his creative rap, hip-hop, and R&B renditions found throughout “Hamilton,” making it easy for the play to gain traction quickly with modern audiences.
“Mamma Mia!” may not be in first place, but it still brought in a staggering 1.5 billion streams. The musical debuted in 1999 in London‘s West End and pays tribute to the music of beloved ’70s group, Abba.
As the performance encourages audiences to sing-along, it’s no wonder that so many continue to do the same at home. “Lay all your love on me” is the most streamed song that fans are belting out with 151,080,454 streams.
The most streamed musical playlists:
| Ranking | Name of the musical | Album streams |
| 1. | Hamilton | 5,658,081,545 |
| 2. | Mamma Mia! | 1,587,994,591 |
| 3. | Dear Evan Hansen | 845,678,685 |
| 4. | Wicked | 535,180,319 |
| 5. | SIX: The Musical | 381,161,427 |
| 6. | Hadestown | 281,967,174 |
| 7. | The Phantom of the Opera | 265,168,200 |
| 8. | The Book of Mormon | 239,491,089 |
| 9. | Legally Blonde | 187,594,401 |
| 10. | Newsies the Musical | 186,133,730 |
Among the rest of the top five are “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Wicked,” and “SIX: The Musical.” “Dear Evan Hansen” has 845,678,685 streams, which is 45 percent more than “Wicked.” The most popular song on the soundtrack is “Waving Through a Window” with over 167 million streams.
On the other hand, not all musicals have seen such success. “A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical” lands in last place with only 381,080 Spotify listens. That’s followed by “Some Like It Hot” and “Shucked” to complete the bottom three.
Methodology:
- Slot Tracker researchers took a seed list of the most popular musicals from multiple sources.
- The experts then utilized Spotify data to collect the number of streams per album, by noting down the number of streams per song and combining them to reveal the number of streams per album.
- The results were then ranked to reveal the most streamed musical of all time.
- For additional data, they also collected the top 10 songs per musical album, and used the open Spotify API tool to track features for the top two most streamed songs from each musical album. These include danceability, energy, key, loudness, speechiness, acousticness, instrumentalness, liveness, valence, and tempo.
