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The past year has minted a pair of new superstars as Ella Langley and Olivia Dean dominate the 2026 top songs chart from Luminate, Variety and Billboard’s official data partner, amid global trends that sees global streaming
climb 10% and Spanish-language music soar to 1 in 10 U.S. streams, per Luminate’s 2026 Midyear Report covering trends in music, television & film.
The two singers both have two songs in the top 10 of the Luminate songs chart — which Variety uses for its year-end Hitmakers chart — with Langley at No. 1 and No. 4, and Dean at No. 2 and 10. However, the year’s top song to date, Langley’s smash “Choosin’ Texas,” has nearly double the numbers as No. 2, Dean’s “Man I Need,” based on total sales-equivalent consumption.*
Three top songs from 2025 are also in the top 10 (by Alex Warren, Huntr/x and Bad Bunny), but that is common for mid-year charts. Also, Luminate now counts background music like “Rain Sounds for Sleeping” in its chart, although Variety does not.
1. Ella Langley “Choosin’ Texas” 629K
2. Olivia Dean “Man I Need” 347K
3. Alex Warren “Ordinary” 339K
4. Ella Langley “Be Her” 312.52K
5. Huntr/X: EJAE, Audrey Nuna & Rei Ami “Golden” 312.51K
6. Bruno Mars “I Just Might” 306K
7. Bad Bunny “DtMF” 278K
8. PinkPantheress, Zara Larsson “Stateside” 277K
9. Taylor Swift “The Fate of Ophelia” 268.1K
10. Olivia Dean “So Easy (to Fall in Love)” 268K
Looking at broader industry trends, global on-demand audio music streams grew 9.8% in the first half of 2026 year over year to 2.8 trillion, while streams outside the U.S. grew 11.8 percent to 2.0 trillion.
Notably, nearly 1 in 10 streams (9.4%; total on-demand audio + video) in the U.S. was in Spanish, while English-language consumption fell to a new low of 87.1%.
R&B/hip-hop continued to dominate U.S. audio streaming with approximately 1 in every 4 streams, but faced increased competition from growth genres like dance / electronic.
The report is powered by Luminate’s 30 trillion data points from hundreds of verified sources and anchored by the company’s team of expert analysts.
Luminate CEO Rob Jonas said, “This is the first Luminate Midyear Report to combine music with film and television under one cover, because the two businesses no longer live separately as they once did. The music industry wants a clearer read on streaming television and theatrical performance; film and television companies are asking for the reverse.”
Elsewhere, driven by the popularity of physical product in the K-pop genre, U.S. CD sales surged 16% to 16.3 million units in the first half of the year, although even without K-pop, CD sales still grew 6.7%.
And in an example of the synergy between film/TV and music, the documentary “The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel” drove an 11% jump in the group’s U.S. streams and an 8% jump globally the week it landed on Netflix.
Other notable statistics include:
U.S. on-demand audio streams grew 4.8 percent to 732.7 billion, a .2 bump from the same period in 2025. Dance / electronic ended the first half of 2026 as the U.S. largest growth genre, with John Summit and Disco Lines are leading the charge.
34% of audio streams are from tracks that are 0-18 months old.
American artists command over two-thirds of U.S. streams.
20% of U.S. music listeners are considered superfans, meaning they engage with artists and music in 5 or more ways; 22% of all music listeners qualify as purchase-based superfans; 17% qualify as engagement-based superfans.
All in all, the report speaks to a continuing surge in music’s global popularity.
*Stream equivalent songs — Song sales with streaming equivalents included (375 ad-supported streams = 1 song sale; 125 premium/paid subscription streams = 1 song sale) This data from Luminate represents the most-consumed songs in the U.S. using digital song sales and on-demand audio streaming equivalents. The period measured starts at tracking week 1 and goes through tracking week 27 of 2026.
