Taylor Swift has added another milestone to her record-breaking streaming career. Her 2020 album Folklore has officially surpassed 12 billion streams on Spotify, becoming the third project in her catalog to reach the landmark.
The achievement places Folklore alongside Lover (14.7 billion streams) and Midnights (12.2 billion), giving Swift three albums with at least 12 billion Spotify streams. No other female artist has reached that feat, making her the first woman in the platform’s history to accomplish it.
Across all artists, Swift now ties Bad Bunny and The Weeknd for the most albums to cross the 12-billion-stream mark, with three each.
Released as a surprise on July 24, 2020, Folklore marked one of the most significant artistic pivots of Swift’s career. Created during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the album traded arena-ready pop for subdued indie folk, chamber pop, and alternative production, with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff serving as her primary collaborators.
Instead of focusing exclusively on autobiographical songwriting, Swift built interconnected fictional narratives inspired by imagined characters, nostalgia, and American folklore. Songs such as “Cardigan,” “The 1,” and “Exile” featuring Bon Iver quickly became fan favorites, with “Cardigan” debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Commercially, the project proved just as successful as it was critically acclaimed. Folklore spent eight nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200, finished as the best-selling album of 2020 in the United States, and has since been certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Critical recognition followed shortly afterward. At the 63rd Grammy Awards, Folklore won Album of the Year, making Swift the first woman ever to claim the category three times. The album’s influence extended beyond awards season, laying the creative foundation for its sister record, Evermore, released just five months later.
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