Rihanna surpasses Taylor Swift as Spotify’s top female artist

Rihanna Surpasses Taylor Swift to Become Spotify’s Most-Listened Female Artist

A decade after releasing her last studio album, Rihanna has overtaken Taylor Swift to claim the title of the female artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify, reaching approximately 105.9 million listeners as of this week. The milestone places the Barbadian singer at number five globally on the platform, trailing only Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, and — until now — Swift.facebook

The streaming analytics account FentyStats confirmed the moment on X, posting that Rihanna “officially becomes the female artist with the most monthly listeners on Spotify (105.9 million), surpassing Taylor Swift. Her last album was released 10 years ago.” The two artists are separated by the thinnest of margins, with Swift holding roughly 105.9 million listeners herself, making the race between them a daily fluctuation.github

A Catalog That Refuses to Fade

Rihanna’s ascent is driven entirely by catalog strength. Her eighth and most recent studio album, “Anti,” released in January 2016, crossed 9 billion total global streams on Spotify in early 2026, according to the platform itself. Spotify’s data shows the album’s streams increased 129 percent between 2020 and 2025, with listeners under 30 accounting for 69 percent of plays last year. In December 2025, “Anti” became the first album by a Black female solo artist to spend 500 weeks on the Billboard 200.substack

Her current streaming surge has also been fueled by TikTok. “Breakin’ Dishes,” a deep cut from her 2007 album “Good Girl Gone Bad,” went viral on the platform beginning in late 2024, eventually charting in multiple countries, including a debut at number 40 on the UK Singles Chart in August 2025. The track appeared on the Spotify Global Top 200 as recently as February 19, 2026. Other catalog staples, including “Love on the Brain,” “Don’t Stop the Music,” and “Only Girl (In the World),” continue to land on the chart as well.instagram

The Power of Presence Without Product

Rihanna’s dominance without a new project underscores a broader shift in how streaming platforms measure relevance. While Swift remains one of the most actively releasing artists in pop music, Rihanna’s reach is built on playlist ubiquity and cultural staying power. In January 2026, Swift still out-streamed Rihanna in total monthly plays — 1.70 billion to 890 million — but Rihanna’s music reaches a wider pool of unique listeners.x

Rihanna’s catalog has already surpassed 1.3 billion Spotify streams in 2026, and she is one of only a handful of artists ever to cross the 100-million monthly listener threshold, a mark she first hit in October 2025. As Rolling Stone noted on the tenth anniversary of “Anti,” Rihanna was once “a dominating force” in pop, and the streaming numbers suggest that force has never truly subsided.revolt

Whether this will finally pressure the Fenty mogul to release the long-awaited follow-up — fans have taken to calling it simply “R9” — remains an open question. In a 2023 interview, Rihanna acknowledged the weight of expectations: “There’s this pressure that I put on myself. That if it’s not better than that then it is not even worth it.”elle