Alright, so I was a little bored this afternoon. The Emptiness Machine has around 135 million streams on Spotify right now, and I wanted to see how this ranks against the rest of LP's discography. I divided every LP song with at least 110m Spotify streams into three categories: Safe (>160m streams) (i.e. >25m ahead of TEM) Under Threat (135m-160m streams) Recently Overtaken (110-135m streams) Of course, I do think TEM will easily exceed 160m streams fairly soon, so take the word 'safe' with a grain of salt for some of these. Currently, if I've counted correctly, there are 31 songs in the Safe or Under Threat categories, making TEM the band's 32nd most streamed song. 20 of these songs are on the band's first three records (21 if you include Lost), which speaks to their popularity. Each of the 7 main studio albums have at least one song with more streams than TEM, although this is likely to change soon as Final Masquerade, the most streamed song from The Hunting Party, has only around 600k more streams than TEM. It also doesn't look great for us A Thousand Suns fans, as Waiting for the End, the most streamed song from ATS, is only around 37 million streams in the clear of TEM - a fair gap, but one that will likely be closed soon. As far as I can see, only two non-album tracks (Lost and New Divide) have more streams than TEM, although it's possible I've missed some. In particular, we have no HT bonus tracks, no demos (except for Lost), no Reanimation tracks or other remixes, no Aoki collabs, no Friendly Fire or QWERTY, no live tracks, and so on. As an unsurprising bonus fact, the only side-project track from any band member with more streams than TEM is Remember the Name, which (comfortably) fits into the Safe category (although interestingly, Where's You Go almost reaches the Recently Overtaken category with over 106m streams, the only other side-project track to get even remotely close). In any case, without further ado, here's the list! Hybrid Theory (8/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (7/12) Papercut One Step Closer Points of Authority Crawling Runaway In The End A Place For My Head Under Threat (1/12) With You Recently Overtaken (2/12) By Myself Pushing Me Away Meteora (7/13 ahead of TEM) Safe (7/12) Don't Stay Somewhere I Belong Lying From You Faint Breaking The Habit From The Inside Numb Under Threat (0/13) N/A Recently Overtaken (1/13) Figure.09 Minutes to Midnight (5/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (5/12) Given Up Leave Out All The Rest Bleed It Out Shadow of the Day What I've Done Under Threat (0/12) N/A Recently Overtaken (1/12) No More Sorrow A Thousand Suns (1/15 ahead of TEM) Safe (1/15) Waiting For The End Under Threat (0/15) N/A Recently Overtaken (2/15) Iridescent The Catalyst Living Things (3/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (3/12) Lost In The Echo Burn It Down Castle of Glass Under Threat (0/12) N/A Recently Overtaken (1/12) Roads Untraveled The Hunting Party (1/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (0/12) N/A Under Threat (1/12) Final Masquerade Recently Overtaken (0/12) N/A One More Light (4/10 ahead of TEM) Safe (2/10) Heavy One More Light Under Threat (2/10) Good Goodbye Battle Symphony Recently Overtaken (1/10) Talking to Myself Miscellaneous (2 ahead of TEM) Safe (2) Lost New Divide Under Threat (0) N/A Recently Overtaken (1) A Light That Never Comes
That's some effort that went into this TEM is a bulldozer, and there is no telling where it'll be in one year from now. Talking about streams, I noticed my boy KTTK just recently crossed the 20 millions. It's not much by LP-standards, and I know that album is a bit the black sheep of the family in term of popularity, but that song in particular is so badass, so that makes me happy ^^
Almost one month later, and the song just kept its crazy pace. It is about to pass Lost (in less than 2 months!), and Lost was a huge hit. And the album isn't even released yet. HITC is lowkey doing well too, it should be around the 100k when the album is released. But TEM is crazy.
I should really use this as an excuse to play around with the Spotify API. But at least it doesn't take too long to do manually given I already have it typed up! Alright, update time! The Emptiness Machine is now up to around 212 million streams. Let's now divide every LP song with at least 187m Spotify streams into three categories: Safe (>237m streams) (i.e. >25m ahead of TEM) Under Threat (212m-237m streams) (i.e. 0-25m ahead of TEM) Recently Overtaken (187-212m streams) (i.e. 0-25m less than TEM) Some comments: The Emptiness Machine is Linkin Park's 23rd most streamed song on Spotify. The Emptiness Machine has more streams than any song on A Thousand Suns or The Hunting Party. The Emptiness Machine is the band's 6th most streamed song released after 2009 (5th if you exclude Lost). If you want to include solo songs, Remember The Name still has (far) more streams than The Emptiness Machine. Hybrid Theory (6/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (5/12) Papercut One Step Closer Crawling In The End A Place For My Head Under Threat (1/12) Points of Authority Recently Overtaken (0/12) N/A Meteora (6/13 ahead of TEM) Safe (5/13) Somewhere I Belong Lying From You Faint Breaking The Habit Numb Under Threat (1/13) From The Inside Recently Overtaken (0/13) N/A Minutes to Midnight (4/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (4/12) Given Up Leave Out All The Rest Bleed It Out What I've Done Under Threat (0/12) N/A Recently Overtaken (1/12) Shadow of the Day A Thousand Suns (0/15 ahead of TEM) Safe (0/15) N/A Under Threat (0/15) N/A Recently Overtaken (0/15) N/A Living Things (2/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (2/12) Burn It Down Castle of Glass Under Threat (0/12) N/A Recently Overtaken (0/12) N/A The Hunting Party (0/12 ahead of TEM) Safe (0/12) N/A Under Threat (0/12) N/A Recently Overtaken (0/12) N/A One More Light (2/10 ahead of TEM) Safe (2/10) Heavy One More Light Under Threat (0/10) N/A Recently Overtaken (0/10) N/A Miscellaneous (2 ahead of TEM) Safe (1) New Divide Under Threat (1) Lost Recently Overtaken (0) N/A
This actually gives a cool overview of the band greatest hits per album as well. Couple of things come to mind when looking at it ^^ It is interesting that MTM has 4 remaining safe songs, while this is also the total count of safe songs among the 4 next records. It adds up with the perceived popularity of the band through the ages Always though ATS and THP shared some vague identity - longer albums, longer songs, transitions, consistent sound palette and approach - and that they were the boldest endeavors of the band from a commercial standpoint. They are kinda like weird relatives, even though they are so sonically distinct from each other. Fits to see them paired here LT and OML weirdly fit together too, having 2 remaining songs each. In fact, OML would have made a lot of sense coming up after LT
I think there's definitely some shared DNA between LT and OML. Brad wrote a lot of folky stuff that translated to parts of Living Things, and a lot of his guitar parts on One More Light (despite being buried) also have a similar influence and approach. Obviously Sharp Edges is one of the most prominent examples, but songs like Heavy (the first one that comes to mind) also have these very nice fingerpicked or gentle folk-feeling guitar parts.