(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Tue 16 December 2025 17:30, UK
Ever since Spotify launched in 2008, it has been one of the most divisive platforms for streaming new music, with many major names across all genres calling it out for various reasons.
Historically, these reasons have centred around audio quality, with the platform being criticised for not offering a listener experience that reaches the standards set by other streaming platforms.
Apple Music, for instance, is said to offer better audio quality options, like lossless and spatial audio, which Spotify didn’t have before. For the more hardcore music lovers, this difference wasn’t just noticeable; it was offensive to the art form and everything it claims to stand for.
One such critic was Neil Young, who previously led a Spotify boycott based on his belief that it perpetuated the spread of misinformation, later claiming that it also butchered the audio quality of his music, even after he settled for it being a necessary evil.
“[I have] sincere hopes that Spotify sound quality will improve and people will be able to hear and feel all the music as we made it,” Young said upon returning to the platform.
More recently, Spotify has been criticised for its AI preference and how its algorithm floods people’s accounts with AI-generated music and steals royalties away from real artists. Many major artists have already left the platform, citing these issues, with a handful of artists speaking out about the issue, including King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard, who recently urged CEO Daniel Ek to “do better”.
What is the most popular classic rock song on Spotify?
Whichever side of the fence you sit on when it comes to Spotify, there’s no denying its prominence in modern culture, especially when it comes to broader positives like quantifying or assessing different versions of success in the music industry.
With pop music, the numbers speak for themselves, but across the rock genre, things are a little more complex.
Take rock fans, for example, their listening habits can be all over the place. Spotify might just be one part of a much bigger picture when it comes to the music they go back to time and again. So when a classic rock track racks up serious streaming numbers, it’s no small feat. In fact, it often means the artist has needed to graft even harder to hit the same heights.
What makes it even more impressive is that the most-streamed classic rock tune on Spotify is none other than Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – a song that’s basically the definition of doing things your own way. Not only did it build a legacy that’s lasted decades, but it’s also clocked up close to three billion streams.
Just behind it, Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’, Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, and Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ are all sitting pretty with around two-and-a-half billion plays each. Not bad going for a bunch of songs that came out long before streaming was even a thing.
Clearly, there’s a pattern among those that fall around the same amount of listens, but it seems that nothing comes close to the impact of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, which still seems to be climbing at an alarming rate, proving the value of going against the grain, even if the odds are stacked against you.
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