Now that the holiday season has passed and the new year is upon us, it’s time for the deluge of articles and TV spots dedicated to health and fitness trends for 2019. Now you can add curated playlists and songs to that list, which might actually be more motivating and helpful than many other factors.
Spotify released new data on Wednesday about the top trends surrounding exercise, broken down by various countries, activities, and music genres. The Stockholm-headquartered company (SPOT), which went public on the New York Stock Exchange last spring and had 83 million paid users as of June 2018, says it now has approximately 43.5 million workout-themed playlists on the streaming platform. And while everyone might be saying they are making resolutions to get into better shape in January (or even February), Spotify found that July is the most active month of the year as to when workout playlists streamed the most, versus November, which was found to be the least active month for workout playlists.
Gender
Women, overall, were found to be much more active users of Spotify’s fitness playlists—especially women between the ages of 35 and 44. They were followed by women in age groups between 45 to 54 and 30 to 34, respectfully. After that, men between the ages of 30 and 34 were most likely to stream fitness-focused playlists.
Sports
There are also some new exercise methods—or old ones experiencing resurgence—affecting Spotify usage. Spotify says that yoga, aerobics, jump rope, and interval training are all growing going into 2019—but none more so than cryotherapy, a cold, near-freezing treatment for tissue therapy. Fittingly, Spotify says Vanilla Ice’s signature classic “Ice Ice Baby” is the number one streamed song among “cryotherapy/ice bath-themed playlists,” followed by Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice,” “Ice Bath” by Xolo, “Cold Water” by Major Lazer featuring Justin Bieber and MØ, and (f course) Idina Menzel’s power ballad “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen.
Songs
As for specific songs, here’s a breakdown of the most popular songs by four key demographics:
Top workout song by age:
- 13-34: “Till I Collapse”—Eminem
- 35-54: “Eye of the Tiger”—Survivor
- 55+: “All About That Bass”—Meghan Trainor
Top workout song by gender:
- Men: “Till I Collapse”—Eminem
- Women: “Uptown Funk”—Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars
Top workout songs globally of 2018:
- “God’s Plan”—Drake
- “I Like It”—Cardi B
- “‘Till I Collapse”—Eminem
- “Nice For What”—Drake
- “One Kiss”—Dua Lipa
Top workout songs globally of all time:
- “’Till I Collapse”—Eminem
- “Lose Yourself” (From 8 Mile soundtrack)—Eminem
- “Stronger”—Kanye West
- “Power”—Kanye West
- “Can’t Hold Us” (feat. Ray Dalton)—Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
Countries
Spotify’s home base of Sweden turned out to be the most “zen” country, which the company defined as top countries for streaming yoga-related playlists and music. The Scandinavian country was followed by Switzerland, Iceland, the Czech Republic, and Spain, respectively.
As for the most active—countries where general workout music is streamed most—Finland tops the list, followed by Sweden, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
