We live in an unprecedented era of music, if you told Tupac in 1995 that you could have an extremely popular song, a song with over a 200 million streams and walk into a popular mall in the same location and be unrecognised, he would have argued that it was impossible. This period of music with streaming has enabled a lot of artists to be able to trade fame for just fortune, you don’t need to be famous, have cultural relevance to stream high in this day and age and that begs the question “In 2025, does streaming numbers still measure fame or have they become a metric without any real meaning ?”
How the Numbers blurred everything ?
Before the Era of Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Youtube Music etc. the Music business was very direct and had been that way for years from the vinyl days to the Pop era but the emergence of streaming changed everything. The way we counted how music was being listened to from the past era was the major change; before streaming, Albums had to be purchased, singles had to be downloaded, most people heard music from radios or at least for the first time and even that was gatekept, but streaming widened the scope and put power in the hand of the listeners, you could now discover fresh artists from whatever device you used and with just a click you were listening.
The problem this created was that hits now became data driven rather than from a cultural movements, playlists became the new marketing tool and that meant artists could rack up streams from their songs being on sleep playlists, background playlists, study playlists etc. while being anonymous, this made fame very scarce.
The Tiktok Effect
From 2019/20, Tiktok came into the music scene and accelerated the route to 100s of millions of streams without having a face in the game. sounds became the currency and artists could get their songs to travel very far and wide without standing up from your house in Alabama. “Thats great no?” In many ways, yes, but fame has it’s own currency. Fame used to bring fandom, a reliance that an artist had a group of people who would largely have their back. Sound famous artists can’t build these type of solid tight niche fanbases. Streams alone aren’t fan loyalty, sold out shows or influence.
The Industry and the Big Numbers
So why does the industry act like streaming is the be it and all of the music business ? because it is trackable, it is raw data and it is easy to manipulate and sell to investors who are always looking to make a sure buck. This creates a scenario where artists with a fame and not so heavy streaming get ignored by the Big Industry folk even if these artists are more assured of selling out shows that the faceless artists. they don’t have the same leverage of fortune that the high streaming artist has. The fans on the other hand have rebelled with their buying habits showing that they are drawn to culture and artists who show personality, vulnerability, or humor online often become more famous than those who simply release great music.
So, Do Streaming Numbers still matter
Yes and No. Every business needs finance to at least stay above water and heavy streaming songs provides that source of revenue, leverage and a bit of exposure but when it comes to real fame it fails to match up. Real fame deals with a face, a brand, personalities, that’s what attracts the fans and makes them stay long after the quality of the music dries up. Streaming is measured by listeners and fails to mostly convert to actual fandom and until a day when the industry’s big hitters can find a way to convert streams to real fame, it will stay like this.
