Shapely soul-popstress Adele is the most(over?)played artist in the world according to data from music discovery service, Last.fm. The weekly chart sees Adele on top for the first time, beating the likes of The Beatles, who are Last.fm’s most played artist as much as 40 weeks out of every year, to the prized spot.
“Last.fm’s chart tracks the most-played artists from millions of listeners all over the world,” said Matthew Sheret, Last.fm’s Data Griot, “It usually favours established artists with a huge fanbase – like Radiohead or Coldplay – or new releases by pop giants like Lady Gaga.” “Throughout the summer Adele did very well to creep into the top five, and it looked like that would be as high as she could go. Her album, ’21’, has been released for a number of months now, and listeners usually move on quite quickly from pop albums, but it’s totally bucked that trend.” Given a fan base in the hundreds of millions, The Beatles or Radiohead usually take the top spot. The typical threshold for an artist to break into the top five is 80,000 listeners per week; Adele totaled 96,408 between September 5th and 11th.
