Which American composers have the most monthly listeners on Spotify?

A couple of weeks back I started wondering about the number of monthly listeners on Spotify that Aaron Copland gets. It was a short hop to comparing this number with that of his modernist peers (Roy Harris, Walter Piston, Virgil Thomson and Roger Sessions). Then I started looking at my favourite composers of the current age (Missy Mazzoli, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe) and that took me on to other great women pioneers whose shoulders they stand on (Joan Tower, Meredith Monk). By this time I was well and truly sucked in and I included composers with a relationship to Copland, his younger peers and his forebears. Finally, for good measure, I included many of the recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Below is the snap shot that came out of this bit of fun.

Of course, I am bound to have missed some – apologies for that. Also, bear in mind that this list changes from month to month and I probably started the process in March 2024 and ended it in April. Hence, the order and numbers may have changed a bit. Also, it must be appreciated that quite a few of the composers in the highest echelons are part-time “classicial” composers and some of their listens will be drived from performing other people’s works or working in different genres (pop, jazz, folk or film). Also, it should be stressed that other streaming providers are available!

So, with these reservations aside here’s the list:

Things that delighted me

I was really pleased to see Copland right up at the top of the list. Of the full time classical music composers only Philip Glass, Samuel Barber and Amy Beach trumped him. I would love to know the most played tracks? I surmise that Barber’s Adagio for Strings is one of the works that draws in his listeners. It’s really impressive that Philip Glass attracts such a huge following (for info J S Bach is the man to beat with 8.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify).

I am even more pleased to see so many women at the top of the list. 10 of the top 50 and 24 in total. Still a long way to go to reach parity but gratifying to see that the cream of the current generation of American composers is rising to the top.

Rhiannon Giddens music is pretty new to me. I know her from the music she has written for the new Martha Graham Dance Company ballet We the People (choreographed by Jamar Roberts) which is being performed this month in New York City on the same bill as (you’ve guessed it!) the new version of Rodeo (with Bluegrass arrangement by Gabriel Witcherand) and Appalachian Spring. There’s always a Copland connection and I wish I was going! (By the way you can watch all these works as part of the live screened Studio Series on the Martha Graham Patreon channel. I’ll be writing a blog on that at some point).

I must say that I was startled by Amy Beech’s lofty position, not because I don’t rate the music but just because she’s certainly not a household name (in the UK at least). I am sure that with nearly 1/2 million monthly listeners on Spotify that she is well in front of a lot of better known male Europeans – good on her!

Things that surprised me (but then again didn’t)

I was really intrigued by the fact that William Grant Still was right next to Florence Price and Eric Whitacre was side by side with Morton Lauridsen and the posse of ultra modernists/minimalists (Steve Reich, John Cage, John Adams, Nico Muhly and Meredith Monk) in close proximity. Of course, the reality is that if you like one thing then you are probably going to leap from that to something similar and if you don’t make the connection yourself the Spotify algorithms will do it for you! So in some respects not really that surprising at all.

What I was very excited about though was the high positions of John Corigliano and Morton Feldman. With the latter, I would have thought he was much more of an “art house” favourite rather than being a bullet in at number 30!

Things that puzzled me

And what about the thing that started me off on this quest – Copland versus his modernist peers? Well they are all way down the pecking order: Virgil Thomson (46), Walter Piston (61), Roy Harris (93) and Roger Sessions (112). I realise that the music of these former standard bearers is now quite old and largely eclipsed by Copland’s almost peerless populist works. Of all of them though, the one that intrigues me the most is the case of Roy Harris. The so called “Cowboy Composer” who was as famous as Copland back in the 1930s and 40s and who now is almost unknown and unplayed. I have been spending a lot of time lately doing a deep dive into his music and reading a lot about his life and works. Watch this space – I’ll soon be publishing a blog on my thoughts on why history has been so kind to Copland and seemingly so unkind to Harris.