Benson Boone and ‘Beautiful Things’, the most listened to musical phenomenon in Spain

It is very possible that the name does not sound familiar to you, and you will be surprised not to know who is the most broadcast artist of the last year in Spain. But it is also true that I have heard their single somewhere ‘Beautiful Things’ and you do hear the little screams of the chorus, in which Benson Boone begs someone not to abandon him and take “the nice things” he has. Because it has been difficult to escape the bombing.

The song has even been in the soup in recent months, playing not only on the main stations but also in an advertisement and above all going viral on networksand now, just one year after its launch, it has all kinds of sales and streaming records.

Benson James Boone was born on June 22, 2002 in Monroe, Washington, and discovered his singing talent at the local high school almost by chance. He signed up for a school talent contest, and from there he went on to enter American Idol. Meanwhile, his TikTok account increased his followers by millions until he was discovered by Dan Reynolds, leader of Imagine Dragons, who signed him to his record label, Night Street Records. And from there to stardom.

Curiously, the second place on the list of most broadcast artists is also for a not very well-known name, Teddy Swims (with ‘Loose Control’), an American singer and songwriter whose music blends genres including R&B, soul, country and pop.

Taylor Swift’s eleventh album ‘The tortured poets department’ (Universal Music) confirms its global success also in Spain, leading the sales charts of 2024 (it reached No. 1 in the week of its release) also occupying No. 1 in the Top 100 vinyls . All of this has allowed it to stay in the Top 100 albums for 36 weeks, achieving a Promusicae certification as a Platinum Record. Along with her latest album, four other albums by the influential artist appear in the Top 100 albums: ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’, ‘Midnights’, ‘Speak now (Taylor’s Version)’ and ‘Red (Taylor’s Version)’ .

Another woman, this time Latin, holds No. 1 in the annual Top100 Songs in 2024 with the undisputed song of the summer ‘If I Had Met You Before’. It is about Karol Gwhich thus obtains the Promusicae certification of the eight-time Platinum Record (which represents more than 480,000 units sold).

Streaming goes up a lot, royalty income not so much

Audio streaming consumption data for 2024, including both premium and free subscriptions financed by advertising, once again surpass those of 2023 since 98.5 billion listens have been reached on all digital platforms of audio streaming, compared to 87,000 million the previous year.

For its part, By 2024, streaming will already represent 90% of music consumption this year. It is notable that within song listening, consumption continues to increase significantly through paid subscriptions which, with a growth of 11%, now account for 57% of total consumption in audio streaming. However, these figures are still far below the 80% quotas presented by neighboring countries such as France or the United Kingdom, which means that our market has not yet recovered to the level that it has in these countries.

«Based on the data shown, we can conclude that although in Spain we are in line with the per capita consumption data of the main European countries, given the low rate of paid subscriptions in Spain, the result in terms of profitability of this consumption is “is translated into lower income for the Spanish recording industry,” they lament from Promusicae.

In terms of sales figures digital consumption would be equivalent to a total of 30 million albums sold (in physical or digital format), a respectable figure but far from the peak of 57 million reached in 2002. Furthermore, the number of artists who reach significant listening figures in audio streaming continues to grow, reaching a figure of 1,180 artists in 2024. with more than 10 million listens to their songs in Spain (208 more than in 2023 and 905 more than in 2005), of them 70 are the favorites by the public, achieving more than 100 million listens to their songs (14 more artists than in 2023).

Another milestone to highlight in 2024 is that in Spain the 2,000 million streams listened to in a week have been exceeded for the first time, specifically it has happened on two occasions, weeks 49 and 51, both in the Christmas campaign.

The data for the physical market in 2024 confirm another exercise of growth in vinyl salesincreasing units sold by 9%. However, overall the sale of physical formats falls by 2% in 2024, a smaller decrease than in 2023.