INTERACTIVE: What’s music to Malaysia's ears? Here’s the answer from Spotify
PETALING JAYA: Malaysia, meet your favourite artistes, according to the number of plays on Spotify.

It turns out that many people in the country are enchanted by Taylor Swift, while others are tapping their feet to K-pop and Indonesian pop songs.

Swift claimed the number one spot as the most streamed artiste in Malaysia, according to data from the music streaming app over the past year.

Her songs were played a total of 94.7 million times within a year on the platform.

In second place is K-pop girl group NewJeans, whose songs were streamed 50.7 million times in the country.

Their most popular song here is the upbeat Super Shy, which raked 14.2 million streams, followed by their viral first hit, OMG at 10.2 million plays.

The numbers are based on an analysis of Spotify data by The Star from May 25 last year to May 23 this year.

Recently, there’s been a boom in music streaming services worldwide, with the number of paid subscriptions to such services exceeding 500 million for the first time, with 667 million overall users of such accounts.

Global recorded music revenues also grew for the ninth year running in 2023, increasing by 10.2% mainly thanks to the rise in paid streaming subscribers, said reports in March.

According to its website, Spotify has more than 615 million users, including 239 million subscribers worldwide.

In Malaysia, there were some changes in popularity among the artistes, but Swift fans, affectionately known as Swifties, kept their queen at the top spot for most of the year.

Watch how the top 10 artistes with the highest number of streams on Spotify changed in a year.

Malaysians are spoilt for choice given Swift's numerous hits, but they particularly loved her breezy number Cruel Summer from her 2019 album, Lover.

It's the most streamed song in Malaysia from the 34-year-old singer.

Trouble for Taylor?

However, while this may come as a surprise, the most played song in Malaysia is not something by Swift.

It's actually an emotional ballad by Indonesian singer Anggi Marito called Tak Segampang Itu.

The song was streamed 25.88 million times, making it the top track enjoyed by Malaysians.

In fact, the love for Indonesian pop in Malaysia is so strong that the second and third songs are also by two Indonesian singers - Sial by Mahalini and penjaga hati by Nadhif Basalamah.

Each track had 19.6 million and 19.5 million streams, respectively.

Swift's hit Cruel Summer only made it to number four in the rankings, with 19.03 million streams.

Here's a taste of the top 10 most listened-to tracks by Malaysians:

Meanwhile, the song that was ranked number one for the most times on Spotify's weekly charts for Malaysia over the past year was Seven (feat. Latto) by Jung Kook, from popular K-pop group, BTS.

The catchy pop hit, which features American rapper Latto, spent a total of 15 out of 53 weeks on top of the charts, for the period between May 25 last year and May 23 this year.

Malaysian, loud and proud

Local artistes were also heavily played on the music streaming app, with singer Sufian Suhaimi being tops.

Cumulatively, his songs were streamed 12.4 million times, with his sentimental hit Terasa Ada getting the most plays at 9.7 million streams.

Pop rock band Projector Band was second, with 11.2 million streams in the past year.

Among local artistes, the song that Malaysians listened to the most was hip-hop number Malampagi by rapper Saixse.

The song, with its thumping beat, garnered 10.82 million streams on Spotify.

Have a listen to songs by our homegrown talent in the list below:

Reach for the stars

To make it big in the age of music streaming today, local artistes need to "aggressively" promote themselves and their music by jumping on such streaming platforms, urged Malaysian Artistes Association (Karyawan) president Datuk Freddie Fernandez.

“TikTok is the number one promotional platform for music nowadays, followed by Spotify, YouTube, and then radio and TV.

“An artiste’s digital presence is key nowadays and being consistent in promoting their material on the various digital platforms is a big factor in achieving success.

“Ground appearances and promotional activities are also a must to help generate fans and followers, especially for new artistes,” he said.

Fernandez said all types of media should be fully utilised and artistes need to be able to push their songs as well as to generate income streams from their music, shows, events, campaigns and the like.

“The government has introduced grants for foreign promotions and that is a good starting point to introduce our artistes regionally and worldwide.

“We have achieved some semblance of success with (Malaysian singers) Yuna in the US, Fish Leong and Michael and Victor Wong in China, and Siti Nurhaliza and the band Search in Indonesia.

“It’s all about hard work, maintaining the highest standards in terms of quality, and then going all out to market it using all the mediums available at our disposal,” said Fernandez, who is also chairman of Music Malaysia, a confederation of music associations aimed at improving the local music scene.

He also suggested that Malaysia look at South Korea’s way of promoting K-pop, where the government worked with the entertainment industry to ensure high standards in music production, followed by strong promotional efforts internationally.

“BTS and Blackpink are just two examples of the tremendous success they have achieved in this realm.

“The Malaysian government should learn from this great example and incorporate some plans to promote local music content abroad,” he added.

With such efforts, local artistes could be given a much-needed boost to gain more international recognition and fans.

Meanwhile, check out the table below to see if your favourite artiste or song made it to the top 100 most listened songs on Spotify in Malaysia:
We analysed what Malaysia has been listening to on Spotify over the past year. The results are in, so drum roll please!