In 2021, Adele asked Spotify to disable album shuffle play, arguing that albums are sequenced to tell a story. New streaming data suggests that among major female pop artists, Olivia Rodrigo is the most album-oriented act in the streaming era.
Spotify changed the default setting for albums to play tracks in order, a move widely praised by artists and fans. The change highlighted the importance of respecting creative intent in music.
However, data indicates that Adele’s own albums were not being streamed end-to-end by listeners. Her first two LPs, 19 and 21, both open and close with high-performing tracks, but stream counts dip in the middle sections. On 19, streams dip toward the end before ‘Hometown Glory’. On 21, they wane in the second half after ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ until ‘Someone Like You’. Later albums 25 and 30 show similar ebb and flow between major songs and less popular ones. On 30, ‘Easy On Me’ is the only track with a plaque in Spotify’s Billions Club, while 21 and 25 each have three.
Albums return as a centerpiece
A group of current major female solo artists, including Adele, Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, and Lana Del Rey, have emphasized albums as a primary format. Their dedicated fan bases, many of whom are young, female, and LGBTQ, have increasingly treated the album as the central listening experience, even among streaming-native audiences accustomed to playlists. This shows in strong physical format sales and in streaming data.
How album orientation was measured
An analysis of the top 200 streamed albums ranked by least-streamed album track was used to compare album listening patterns. The sample was cleaned to remove intros, interludes, EPs, and compilations, and only studio albums were included. Artists needed at least three albums in the sample for comparison.
For each album, a ratio was calculated by dividing the average stream count of the top two tracks by the least-streamed track. A lower ratio indicates more consistent listening across the full album.
Olivia Rodrigo leads in album listening
Among the female pop artists compared, Olivia Rodrigo had the lowest average track differential ratio across her three studio albums. Her album track counts remain high throughout each record, despite having several high-performing streaming hits.
- SOUR: seven songs in Spotify’s Billions Club; least-streamed track ‘hope ur ok’ is approaching half a billion streams.
- GUTS: all 12 tracks charted in the top 40 of the Hot 100 simultaneously.
SOUR also appeared on a 2021 list of the 50 best albums and was later ranked number 358 on a list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
The simultaneous chart placement for GUTS reflects album-equivalent sales counting methods, which can place multiple tracks from one album on the Hot 100 at the same time.
