Spotify #1 artist annual streams

Germans drinking less beer per head, the world's most-streamed Spotify artist racking up more plays. The young German is, statistically, listening to the streams instead of holding a stein. The negative correlation has the look of a generation choosing differently.

German per-capita beer consumption fell by about 10 percent across this window as younger Germans drank less and substituted lower-alcohol options. The Spotify number-one artist's annual streams roughly doubled in the same period as the platform's user base passed 600 million and listening hours per user climbed. Two completely independent generational lines sharing a window because the same eight years saw the same cohort drink less and stream more. The headphones replaced the bar stool, in part.

A generation traded one habit for another. Two graphs of the same youth, allocated differently.