PlayStation Music: One Year And A Whole Freaking Lot of Drake Later

  A couple decades or so ago, games consoles were strictly that: Lil’ boxes that played video games. Nothing more, nothing less. We could get our Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Super Mario World on, and that was all. And we were effing grateful for it.  

Today’s fancy-ass Xbox Ones and PS4s do so much more on top of that. In pre-release PR events, dudes in suits would stride about on stages, dropping Powerpoint presentations on our asses, using terms like ‘multimedia device’ and ‘fully-integrated home entertainment experience.’ However they phrased it, the message was clear. This mothereffer doesn’t just power video games, buddy boy.

When games hit the CD format, in the PS1 days, the console could double as a CD player. Sure, about seven people in the world used the function on a regular basis, but it could. As the tech’s advanced, consoles have included apps and all kinds of functionality. Similarly, no-one’s assed about most of it (even their web browsers are a bit shit), but it’s reassuring to know that it’s there.

One thing that has done well, though, is PS4/PS3/Sony device’s PlayStation Music. A music streaming service powered by Spotify, it hit the console a year ago and has already hit 5 billion streams. Five billion, we can all agree, is a big freaking number right there.   

We know this because, as GameSpot reports, Spotify compiled some data to celebrate the success of PlayStation Music’s first year. Here’s another slice:

'In terms of popularity by artist, "Hotline Bling" singer Drake was the most-streamed artist globally during PS Music's first year. The most-streamed track, meanwhile, was "Leon On (feat. MØ & DJ Snake)" by Major Lazer. In the US, Drake also reigned supreme, as he was the most-streamed artist and had the most popular song, "Jumpman." Spotify also announced that across the world and in the US, Saturday proved to be PS Music's most popular day in terms of time spent streaming. The most popular hour of the week was 8-9 PM on Friday worldwide.'

So there it is. More infotastic over at the link.