15 billion streams

The most popular Spotify artist that nobody knows

The Swede Johan Röhr is one of the most successful "mood makers" on Spotify.(Bild: stock.adobe.com, Krone KREATIV)

Measured by his streaming views, he is more successful than Michael Jackson, Metallica or Mariah Carey and "well on his way to overtaking the Beatles" - and yet hardly anyone has heard of him. How a Swede became a streaming superstar and the lucrative business behind it.

According to a Wikipedia entry, Johan Röhr was born on 20 September 1976 in Täby, just a few kilometers north of the Swedish capital Stockholm. The son of a jazz trombonist, he attended music school as a child and sang as a boy soloist at the opera before turning increasingly to the keyboard and thus to pop music. In the years that followed, he worked primarily as a conductor, songwriter and producer for various television programs.

More successful than Elton John and Abba
But what is kept secret: Röhr is far more musically active than the short entry in the Swedish online encyclopaedia suggests. His songs alone have been streamed 15 billion times on the Swedish streaming market leader Spotify to date - making Röhr not only the most played artist in Sweden at present, but also more successful in terms of views than Elton John (11.6 billion) or Sweden's biggest pop export Abba (7.6 billion). His "trick": a well-kept secret.