Barbie songs streamed 52 million times on Spotify in opening weekend alone

Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Aqua’s Barbie World track take the lead as Barbie songs hit 52 million streams on Spotify on its opening weekend.

• Barbie World by Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice and Aqua is the most streamed song from the movie’s official album
• Aqua almost doubled their Spotify following in three weeks
• Ryan Gosling beat other established artists in terms of new listeners added on Spotify in the opening weekend

Spotify users listened to the 19 songs from the extended edition of The Barbie Album almost 52 million times in just three days. Barbie World, by Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice and Aqua, accounts for 10.3 million of these streams – the most of all the tracks on the official movie album. Meanwhile, Aqua gained the most new listeners over the movie’s opening weekend among all the artists featured on the album.

This is according to the educational music platform Music Industry How To, who monitored the Spotify data for all Barbie-related music before and after the movie’s release on July 21st. Launched on the same day as the much-anticipated movie, the namesake album features 11 brand-new songs and eight previously released tracks.

The songs on The Barbie Album (The Best Weekend Ever Edition) totalled 51,985,020 streams on Spotify over the first three days since the movie’s release. Nicki Minaj’s rendition of Aqua’s classic Barbie Girl, featuring the original band and Ice Spice, is the most streamed song from The Barbie Album. Barbie World was listened to 10,308,180 times in just one weekend. First released on Spotify on June 23rd, its total stream count stood at 65,156,199 as at the end of 23 July.

Dua Lipa just missed out on having the most streamed Barbie song, with her hit single Dance The Night gaining another 10,120,370 streams over the opening weekend. This brings the track’s grand total since its release in late May to 127,408,954 streams on Spotify. With nearly 70 million monthly listeners on the streaming service, Dua Lipa is still the most followed artist featured on The Barbie Album.

Inching just half a million streams behind is Billie Eilish’s What Was I Made For. Released a week before the movie, the track had the fastest pace of daily streams of all known Barbie songs before the premiere, with an average of nearly 2.5 million streams per day. Over the movie’s opening weekend, it gained 9,608,211 more streams on Spotify, totalling 30,546,883 so far.

The Spotify data monitored by Music Industry How To suggests that Aqua went from 13.5 million listeners at the beginning of the month to 25.2 million in just three weeks. Nearly two million of them started listening to Aqua between July 21^st and July 23^rd. This makes the band the music act with the most new listeners on the streaming platform over the opening weekend of the Barbie movie. The original Barbie Girl by Aqua, released in 1997, gained an extra 3.5 million streams on Spotify over three days since the movie premiered. Spotify users streamed Barbie Girl 13 million more times since the beginning of July.

With an active following of 56.4 million before releasing her latest Barbie-themed single, Billie Eilish gained an extra 3.2 million monthly listeners since What Was I Made For came out. Over one million of them started listening to her on Spotify in the movie’s opening weekend.

Ryan Gosling, whose Spotify music includes several soundtracks from La La Land, had 1.4 million monthly listeners before Barbie, the movie, premiered, where he plays Ken. He gained 941,474 new listeners ever since in just three days, beating other established artists like Nicki Minaj, Lizzo and Dua Lipa. Ryan Gosling has two tracks on The Barbie Album: I’m Just Ken and Push.

A spokesperson for Music Industry How To commented on the findings: “Big-ticket artists have contributed to promoting Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie. In the lead-up to the movie’s box office release, we noticed the hype these artists created by gradually releasing Barbie-themed songs. We had another epic disco track from Dua Lipa in late May, an exciting remix of Aqua’s classic by Nicki Minaj in late June, and then a gorgeous ballad from Billie Eilish in mid-July. It was a beautifully orchestrated campaign for the movie to get pop music aerophiles excited about Barbie.”