Given her huge success over the past 12 months - she’s conquered sales, streaming, touring and even the box office - it would have been a surprise if anyone other than Taylor Swift had been named Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2023. And she has indeed taken the crown, setting a new Apple Music record for the most listeners of any artist in a single year.
The first 10 months of 2023 also saw an incredible 65 different Taylor Swift songs land in Apple Music’s Global Daily Top 100 - again, more than any other artist. She’s done pretty well, then.
These stats and others have been made public in Apple’s year-end charts, but Swift didn’t have things all her own way. She may have left country music behind (for now, at least) but Morgan Wallen, another star of the genre, hit the summit of the Top Songs of 2023: Global chart with Last Night. Wallen’s One Thing at a Time, meanwhile, has been confirmed as the number one album.
Other things to note are that J-Pop is on the rise, with YOASOBI’s “アイドル (Idol)” being the most sung-along-to song (according to the number of uses of Apple Music’s Sing feature, that is) and that R&B, and SZA in particular, has also had a very good year. Her album SOS was the second biggest album of 2023, and the lyrics to her song Kill Bill were the most read. The most Shazamed song, meanwhile, was Rema’s Calm Down.
As well as these global stats, Apple Music has also dropped Replay 2023 - its version of Spotify Wrapped - which enables subscribers to discover which songs, artists, albums and genres they listened to most this year. Anyone with an account can log in to the Apple Music Replay website to view their stats, and then share them with friends and on social media.
Or, if it turns out that your tastes aren’t quite as cool as you thought they were, possibly not.
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