MBW’s Stat Of The Week is a series in which we highlight a data point that deserves the attention of the global music industry. Stat Of the Week is supported by music data analytics firm Chartmetric.
The Weeknd’s synth-pop hit Blinding Lights has shattered yet another record, becoming the first song in Spotify history to cross 5 billion streams.
Blinding Lights is the second single from The Weeknd’s fourth studio album, After Hours. Following its November 2019 release, the track dominated the Billboard Hot 100 chart for four straight weeks. It was the first song to stay in the chart’s Top 10 for an entire year.
Swedish musicians Max Martin and Oscar Holter co-produced the song alongside The Weeknd and Canadian musicians Belly and DaHeala.
The latest milestone, announced by Spotify on social media over the weekend, comes over a year after Blinding Lights made history by hitting 4 billion streams.
“On August 31st, 2025, The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights became the first song to reach 5 billion streams on Spotify,” the streaming giant announced the same day.
On YouTube, the official music video for Blinding Lights has garnered 962 million views since it premiered in January 2020.
In 2024, when the song hit the 4 billion-stream milestone, Jeremy Erlich, Spotify’s then-global head of music, told Billboard: “This is one of many records he has broken with us. As our platform continues to grow globally, his music reaches more and more people, and his fandom deepens. The success of ‘Blinding Lights’ is a prime example that nothing connects people more than music. It’s an exceptional song in a class of its own.”
The latest achievement coincides with the track topping Billboard’s Top Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs of the 21st Century chart. Blinding Lights was named Billboard’s Greatest of All Time in its Hot 100 Songs chart in November 2021.
Following that feat in 2021, The Weeknd told Billboard for a cover story: “By the time Blinding Lights happened, I was 10 years into my career and established as a music figure in the industry already. So I’m glad Blinding Lights happened when it happened as opposed to it being the first single I’ve ever dropped. That’d be scary for me.”
The feat also comes as The Weeknd, born Abel Makkonen Tesfaye, was recently reported to be seeking USD $1 billion in financing backed by his music catalog. Bloomberg reported on August 23, citing people familiar with the matter, that the Canadian artist would pledge his stake in publishing rights and master recordings.
New York-based Lyric Capital Group is reportedly leading the talks, with The Weeknd already reaching out to other investors to assemble the financing package of up to $1 billion.
The Weeknd is currently in the final stretch of his After Hours Til Dawn Stadium Tour, which launched in May and is set to conclude on Wednesday (September 3) at the Alamodome in San Antonio.
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