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 a follower count and a 0–100 popularity score and nothing else about audience. 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 15 September 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. 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 2025-06-07. 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. 46,208,282 in the recording.
stats.followers
Follower count, the one number the official API also returns. 148,316,537 in the recording.
stats.worldRank
The artist's position in Spotify's global ranking by listeners — 65 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 4,035,818 listeners, then New Delhi, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.
profile.name, profile.verified
Display name and the verified badge. The recording also carries biography, external links and the artist's own playlists under profile.
discography, relatedContent
Latest release, albums, singles, appears-on and the related-artists block, in the same response — one call covers the whole artist page.

46,208,282

stats.monthlyListeners

148,316,537

stats.followers

#65

stats.worldRank

Three numbers from one recording, 2025-06-07. They are shown to make the shape concrete, not as current figures — press Run on the endpoint page for today's.

One artist, 25 artists, or the top of the platform

/artist_overview_batch takes up to 25 comma-separated ids and returns the same object per artist, so a roster or a playlist's worth of artists is one request rather than twenty-five.

/top_20_by_monthly_listeners and /top_20_by_followers take no parameters and rank the platform. The recorded listeners response, captured 2025-06-07, holds 50 rows of rank, artist and monthlyListeners expressed in millions — the first row reads Bruno Mars at 119.91.

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 one batch request a day — 30 requests a month, inside the free tier's 1,000.

For push instead of pull, /tracking/track?type=artist&id= registers an artist for change tracking and POST /webhooks/register names the URL that receives events. Both are on the reference under Tracking and Webhooks; 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 carries followers.total, a popularity score from 0 to 100, genres, images and a name. 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?

The API fetches the artist page from Spotify when you call it, so the response reflects the figure Spotify shows at that moment. The demo on this site caches GET responses for up to a day; a call with your own key is not served from that cache.

Can I get monthly listeners for many artists at once?

Yes. GET /artist_overview_batch takes up to 25 comma-separated artist ids and returns the same overview object for each, so a roster is one request. GET /artists?ids= also accepts a list but returns the official-shaped artist object, which has followers and popularity only.

Is worldRank a global position?

It is the rank Spotify itself displays on the artist page ("#65 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; a daily batch call for 25 artists costs 30 requests a month.

Which plan do I need?

Any. Every plan on RapidAPI and the direct portal includes every endpoint; the tiers differ by monthly volume and requests per second. RapidAPI's free plan allows 1,000 requests a month.

Sources

More guides

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