With 8.3 billion streams, Puerto Rican rapper and singer is Spotify's most-streamed artist of 2020, the first time an artist that has never sung in English tops the year-end list. Second to Bad Bunny for 2020 is Drake, while another Latin act, J Balvin, came in at No. 3, followed by the late rapper Juice WRLD and The Weeknd. Bad Bunny's album 'YHLQMDLG' is also the most-streamed album globally on the service, with over 3.3 billion streams, ABC reports. Spotify’s most-streamed song of the year is Blinding Lights', with 1.6 million streams globally.

Stereogum explores the power of Spotify, similar to TikTok's, describing the lives of two relatively obscure indie-rock songs from the 1980s and 1990s. Pavement's 'Harness Your Hopes' was three-decade-old b-side before it became number one on Pavement’s Spotify page, ending up with over 28 million plays to date. Another one in Galaxie 500's 'Strange' which was a song from a long-overlooked album track, and ended up as the most popular Galaxie 500 song on Spotify. How did this happen? Mostly, thanks to Spotify's Autoplay feature which cues up music that “resembles” what the listener has been listening to previously.

A serious analysis in the Baffler of Spotify and its business model: "Over the past year, Spotify transformed its stated aspirations as a company. It used to see itself as the go-to platform providing 'music for every mood and moment' - not just a music streaming service but one that knows your taste better than you know it yourself. That changed in February 2019, when Spotify announced its acquisitions of Gimlet and Anchor in a letter declaring itself 'Audio First'". Spotify went wider with the content becoming a podcast company as well, but - "in many ways, though, the $50 billion company is treating podcasters similarly to how it has historically treated musicians, with a system that privileges the already moneyed and powerful".

"Spotify has to keep three competing interest groups - investors, audiences, rights-holders and creators - happy or it does not have a business. As it gets bigger and more established, however, it feels that it can afford to make moves that may antagonise rights-holders / creators and audiences but that will keep investors happy" - Music Industry Blog writes in an analysis of the new Discovery Mode Spotify announced this week (offers artists and labels more play for lower royalty rate). "The logic is that Spotify is getting so big that those two audiences cannot do without it (the ‘too big to fail’ stage) but that investors have many other places to put their money. So, investors are more ‘at risk’ than the others".

Spotify has announced a new feature through which artists, labels and rights holders can promote specific songs within the service's autoplay and Radio algorithms, The Verge reports. This visibility boost will be available at the cost of lower royalty payouts. Spotify hasn't yet announced how much lower.

Over 6,000 musicians, producers, road crew, and other industry workers had signed an online petition demanding a penny per stream royalty from Spotify, which is about triple what Spotify is currently paying. It might, however, be too much for the Swedish streaming company - "If Spotify's model can’t pay artists fairly, it shouldn’t exist", Union of Musician and Allied Workers says, according to CoS.

Very successful 1995 Oasis single 'Wonderwall' has reached billion stream on Spotify, becoming thus the first 90s song to ever surpass one billion streams on that streaming service, Stereogum reports. 'Wonderwall' was originally released as a single on October 30, 1995. It was released on Oasis' '(What's the Story) Morning Glory?' album, the UK’s third best selling album of all time.

The UK government is to launch an investigation on whether the artists are paid fairly by streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, BBC reports. Music streaming in the UK brings in more than £1bn a year in revenue, however, artists can be paid as little as 13% of the income generated. Spotify is thought to pay between £0.002 and £0.0038 per stream, Apple Music pays about £0.0059, with YouTube paying the least - about £0.00052 per stream.

Streams of mental health playlists on Spotify have doubled this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, Independent reports. Playlists related to "mindfulness", "calm", and "self-care" have been streamed 57 per cent more in 2020 than they were last year. Podcasts related to self-help and self-care have seen a 122 per cent increase in streams.

The majority of concerts is moving online, and hopefully, the number (and production quality) of these will grow, so Spotify is adjusting. This week the streaming service had added all those virtual concerts to its "On Tour" listings. Spotify is working on it in partnership with Songkick.