Calvin Harris has become the first UK solo act to notch up more than one billion plays worldwide on an internet music streaming service.
The DJ and chart star is one of only a few global music acts to achieve the milestone on Spotify, a digital service which allows people access to millions of tracks. He joins Coldplay as the only other British artists to do so.
Dumfries-born Harris's hit Summer is the most popular track on the service and has now been streamed more than 160 million times. His music has been streamed on Spotify for the equivalent of over 5,000 continuous years.
He is the eighth act to break through the billion barrier and joins the likes of Eminem, Rihanna, David Guetta and Katy Perry.
The success of services such as Spotify compares with the decline of UK album sales. Only around 1.18m copies of the traditional format were sold last week, the lowest figure for 19 years as users save playlists via streaming services.
Spotify gives 70 per cent of its revenues to rights holders and says that all artists will benefit from streaming becoming the main way of consuming music.Mark Terry, the co-president of his label Columbia Records UK, said: "This is a landmark achievement for Calvin and deserved recognition that he is in the elite tier of global artists."
Steve Savoca, Spotify's vice-president of content and distribution, said: "We would like to congratulate Calvin Harris on reaching the huge milestone of a billion streams on Spotify, conclusive proof if any were needed that he is one of the most popular artists on Spotify."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article