Spotify
In a current study on Spotify, the most popular video game soundtracks on the music platform were analyzed and presented in two different rankings depending on their number of hits. On the one hand the most popular album is in focus, on the other hand the most popular song was presented.According to the current status, the soundtrack of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is the most listened to video game album on Spotify. The Bethesda RPG songs have now been listened to over 316.3 million times. This is followed by the soundtrack of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with a total of more than 304.1 million clicks. The podium finally makes The Last of Us album complete. You can find the complete overview in our list below.
Top 10 Most Popular Video Game Soundtracks on Spotify (Album)
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Original Soundtrack - 316,387,843 The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Original Soundtrack - 304,138,799 The Last of Us - 178,351,897 The Music of League of Legends Vol. 1 - 81,677,962 Ori and the Blind Forest Original Soundtrack - 80,858,446 God of War (PlayStation Soundtrack) - 74,184,832 Crypt of the Necrodancer Original Soundtrack - 71,048 .161 Mass Effect 3 Original Soundtrack - 66,226,018 Assassin's Creed Black Flag Original Soundtrack - 58,723,737 Assassin's Creed 2 Original Soundtrack - 55,817,446Top 10 Most Popular Video Game Soundtracks on Spotify (Song)
The Choice / The Last of Us - 36,809,934 Get Jinxed / League of Legends - 35,197,458 The Last of Us / The Last of Us - 34,965,692 Ezio's Family / Assassin's Creed 2 - 26,906,019 God of War / God of War - 23,452,551 Dragonborn Theme / Skyrim - 22,813,109 Black Flag Main Theme / Assassin's Creed Black Flag - 2 0.745.746 Geralt of Rivia - The Witcher 3 - 19.245.869 Far Away / Red Dead Redemption - 18.739.688 Halo / Halo: Combat Evolved - 17.797.012The Nod hosts ditch Spotify to relaunch their original show
© SiriusXM/Stitcher Photo: For Colored Nerds hosts Eric Eddings and Brittany LuseThe co-hosts of The Nod are back, and this time, they’ve separated from Gimlet Media and Spotify and are instead taking their work to SiriusXM’s Stitcher. Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings tell The Verge today that they’re relaunching their Black culture show For Colored Nerds this fall, which they created, hosted, and produced prior to working at Gimlet. The podcast will be available widely and isn’t exclusive to one platform.
Stitcher will produce the show along with them, and SXM Media will exclusively sell ads for it. The co-hosts last published a For Colored Nerds episode in 2017, but the same feed will be revived for the comeback.
Notably, Eddings and Luse retain total control over their show — they own the audio masters, the feed, and rights to derivative works — and they’ve landed on a revenue sharing agreement with Sirius. (The specifics of the deal, like how much Stitcher paid them to come over and the percentage of ad revenue they’ll receive, weren’t disclosed.)
“I can’t tell you how great it feels to be able to have the type of flexibility, and independence, and true support, that we have right now,” Luse says in a chat with The Verge. “The industry is no longer in its infancy; the industry’s maturing, and so I think people’s desires for what they’re looking for out of ownership deals and things like that are changing.”
Luse and Edding’s ‘For Colored Nerds’ show will return this fall
The ownership part of the deal was especially critical for Luse and Eddings, who spoke out in June 2020 about their frustration with Gimlet’s control over The Nod’s feed and IP. The two pitched, hosted, and produced the show and felt like they owned it, but they never did.
“Providing institutional support is not the same as producing the actual product,” Luse says in this recent chat. “So I think that eventually the industry is going to have to bend toward a situation where there are organizations that are providing institutional support to people who want to make quality audio without demanding that they also hand over all of their ownership.”
The industry still faces challenges around IP and ownership, even if it’s a top-of-mind issue. The Ringer and Gimlet unions strived to reach an agreement on IP, but weren’t able to secure anything in their final contract with Spotify. In a chat with Hot Pod’s Nick Quah last August, prior to any finalized contracts, Lowell Peterson, executive director of the Writers Guild of America East, called fighting for IP rights an “uphill battle.”
“Having some ability to share in the fruits of the creative labor and maybe even exploit it on your own or stay with it either financially or creatively if it becomes something bigger… yes, that’s definitely been an issue,” he said at the time.
And Eddings acknowledged in our recent chat that more resources need to be readily available to independent creators who might not know how to get started with creating, pitching, and ultimately owning a show, especially when negotiating with massive corporations.
“I feel like we have to whisper sometimes in terms of asking about a lawyer,” he says as one example. “It needs to become a thing that that is normalized and standardized because it’s super important.”