If you have no idea who this artist is, here's a clue: he's English, he's dated Ellie Goulding, and he sang one of the songs of the soundtrack of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Yes, it's Ed Sheeran.
Spotify, the digital music service provider, recently released a list of its site's most streamed artist of 2014 Wednesday and Sheeran top worldwide streaming, according to a CBC report.
The British singer-songwriter got 860 million streams on Spotify this year. His album, x, was streamed 430 million times, despite not-so-friendly reviews - The Independent called Sheeran's album "uninspiring".
Apart from Sheeran, other artists with most streamed songs include Ariana Grande, Calvin Harris, Eminem, Coldplay and Katy Perry.
Grande was Canada's artist of choice, while Harris' Blame was the track most streamed. Eminem, on the other hand, tops the U.S. list, while Coldplay and Katy Perry bagged the most streamed group and female performer worldwide, respectively.
Happy, Pharell William's, well, very happy song, is the most streamed song worldwide, being streamed 260 million times, according to Quartz, while Iggy Azalea's song Fancy was the U.S.'s most streamed song of the year.
Meanwhile, Swedish DJ and producer Avicii remains in the spotlight for the track Wake Me Up with more than 300 million streams on Spotify.
Last year, the most streamed artists on Spotify were Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.
Spotify's list came out the same day as Billboard 200 released its own updated ranking to track weekly album sales. Tracking sales of albums help the music industry have a comprehensive "feel" of what is popular among music consumers.
However, Spotify was not spared from controversy either. Last month, American singer Taylor Swift pulled her music catalogue and accused the music service provider of devaluing music.
Daniel Ek, co-founder of the streaming service responded to Swift's accusations through the company's blog and said the singer was right about music being an art, but erred on what Spotify offers.
"Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it," Ek wrote last month. "So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time."
