Guide

Spotify monthly listeners API: listeners, followers, world rank and top cities per artist

The number under every artist's name in the Spotify app — monthly listeners — is not in the Web API. The official artist object carries at most a follower count and a 0–100 popularity score, nothing else about audience, and Spotify marks both deprecated and removed them for development-mode apps created from 11 February 2026. One call here returns listeners, followers, a world rank and the five cities where the artist is played most.

By Eduardo Airaudo, maintainer of the API · Updated 22 October 2026

What the official artist object leaves out

GET /v1/artists/{id} on the Spotify Web API returns followers.total, a popularity integer, genres, images and a name — the first three marked deprecated, and followers and popularity removed for development-mode apps created from 11 February 2026. Monthly listeners — the figure Spotify itself puts on the artist page and the one labels, managers and playlist pitchers actually track — appears nowhere in the reference, and no scope adds it.

Popularity is a relative, opaque score recomputed by Spotify from recent plays; it cannot be converted into listeners, compared across months, or explained to a client. Monthly listeners is an absolute count that moves with a release, a sync placement or a playlist add, which is why it is the number people want.

/artist_overview here returns the artist page as the app renders it, audience block included. The same call carries the discography, related artists and pinned items, so the audience numbers come with the context needed to read them.

What comes back

Read off the recorded /artist_overview response for Arijit Singh (4YRxDV8wJFPHPTeXepOstw), captured 2026-10-22. The full recording is on the endpoint's own page.

stats.monthlyListeners
The audience figure on the artist page: distinct listeners over the trailing 28 days, as an integer. 53,500,280 in the recording.
stats.followers
Follower count. Spotify removed it from its own artist object for development-mode apps created from 11 February 2026; extended-quota apps still get it. 195,766,074 in the recording.
stats.worldRank
The artist's position in Spotify's global ranking by listeners — 56 in the recording. Absent for artists outside the ranked set.
stats.topCities.items[]
Five rows of city, region, country and numberOfListeners. The recording opens with Pune, IN at 4,174,171 listeners, then Delhi, New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
profile.name
Display name. The recording also carries the biography, an externalLinks list (empty for this artist), the pinned item and the artist's own playlists under profile, and no verified flag.
discography, relatedContent
Latest release, albums, singles, appears-on and the related-artists block, in the same response — one call covers the whole artist page.

53,500,280

stats.monthlyListeners

195,766,074

stats.followers

#56

stats.worldRank

Three numbers from one recording, 2026-10-22. They are shown to make the shape concrete, not as current figures — press Run on the endpoint page for today's.

One artist, 10 artists, or a ranking

/artist_overview_batch takes up to 10 comma-separated ids and returns the same object per artist, so 10 artists cost one request rather than 10.

In the spec's words, /top_20_by_monthly_listeners is “Wikipedia's list of the most-streamed artists on Spotify: up to 50 rows of {rank, artist, monthlyListeners}, where monthlyListeners is in millions (129.8 means 129,800,000). Not country-specific” and /top_20_by_followers is “Wikipedia's list of the most-followed artists on Spotify (followers in millions). Not country-specific”. Neither takes a parameter.

The recorded listeners response, captured 2026-10-22, holds 50 rows of rank, artist and monthlyListeners expressed in millions — the first row reads Bruno Mars at 128.6.

Fetch an artist's audience numbers

The id is the 22-character string after /artist/ in any Spotify URL. Have a name instead? /search?q=&type=artists returns the id.

Tracking the number over time

Spotify publishes a single current value, not a history. A time series is yours to build: call /artist_overview on a schedule, store stats.monthlyListeners with a timestamp, and difference the rows. A daily job for a 25-artist roster is 3 batch requests a day — 90 requests a month, inside the free tier's 1,000.

To have the API keep the history, /tracking/track?spotifyType=artist&spotifyId= registers the artist; its monthly_listeners_change and followers_change rows collect in /tracking/logs, which you poll. Webhooks cover playlist changes only. Both are on the reference under Tracking; they are operational endpoints, so the demo on this site does not run them.

Questions

Does the Spotify Web API return monthly listeners?

No. The artist object in the Web API reference lists followers.total, popularity, genres, images and a name. The first three are marked deprecated, and followers and popularity were removed for development-mode apps created from 11 February 2026. Monthly listeners is shown in Spotify's own clients but is not part of the documented API and no OAuth scope exposes it.

How current is the number?

Artist overviews are cached for about an hour, so a response can trail the figure in the Spotify app by up to that long. Add cache=false to force a fresh fetch; the X-Cache header says how each response was served. The Run buttons on this site go through the demo's own cache as well, so a figure there can be older.

Can I get monthly listeners for many artists at once?

Yes. GET /artist_overview_batch takes up to 10 comma-separated artist ids and returns the same overview object for each, so 10 artists cost one request. GET /artists?ids= also takes a list, but returns Spotify's own artist object: no monthly listeners, and for many artists no follower count either.

Is worldRank a global position?

It is the rank Spotify itself displays on the artist page ("#56 in the world" in the recording used here). Artists outside the ranked set have no worldRank field, so treat it as optional.

What are top cities?

stats.topCities.items lists the five cities with the most listeners for the artist, each with city, region, country and numberOfListeners. It is the same block the artist page shows under About.

Can I get the history of an artist's monthly listeners?

Not from Spotify, which publishes only the current value. Store the number on a schedule and you have the history from that day on; 3 batch calls a day for 25 artists cost 90 requests a month.

Which plan do I need?

Any. The endpoints this guide uses are on every plan, RapidAPI and the direct portal alike, and the plans differ by monthly volume; only webhooks need a RapidAPI account, since they are not available with direct keys yet. Every RapidAPI plan allows 5 requests per second and every direct key includes 10. RapidAPI's free plan allows 1,000 requests a month.

Sources

More guides

What changed in the API and on these pages, and when: What's new.

Get a key and pull your first artist

Same endpoints on all three, priced differently. RapidAPI's free tier is 1,000 requests a month — enough to track a roster daily.

RapidAPI Apify Direct Portal