Soundcloud crunches the numbers on 2018 playback report

It’s that time of the year when everyone in the music industry begins releasing their end-of-year lists. For music streaming services, those lists arrive in the most-streamed artists across their platform. Spotify’s Wrapped list and Apple Music’s Best of 2018 chart both saw Drake dominating the top spots. Now Soundcloud has released their 2018 Playback report, an infographic that breaks down which artists saw the most success on its platform over the course of the year.

Soundcloud’s list is markedly different from its competitors, however, due to the fact that it’s platform tends to glean more dance music heavy and feature more un-signed talent. The 2018 SoundCloud Playback also includes the most used tags, biggest traffic spikes, among other distinctions.

Chicago-based rapper Juice WRLD was named Top Artist for amassing more likes, reposts, and streams than any other content creator. His song “Lucid Dreams” was also the Top Track for earning most plays on the platform. Illenium earned Top Remix for his take on The Chainsmoker’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” ft. Daya. Two Friends earned Top DJ Set for their Big Bootie Mix Vol. 13.

Among the Top Tags of the year were synthwave, chill house, deeptech, afrohouse, retrowave, and melodic techno. If nothing else, the category provides an interesting offering of what sub-genres music creators and listeners are turning to. After all, it’s no surprise that underground house and techno were on the rise in the past year, and are setting to stage to become next year’s biggest comeback genres.