Swifties drive 1M streams with Stationhead listening party as more Artists take note

Last week, Taylor Nation, the official Taylor Swift fan account, hosted a listening party for her new album “The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology” on Stationhead, which drove over 1 million streams on Apple Music and Spotify in under 24 hours. 

It’s the latest success story for an app we’ve been writing about since 2019, and more artists and fans are finally discovering it.

Stationhead allows anyone – artist or fan – to create an online radio-like stream that can include chat, “call-ins,” music, and more. The app circumvents licensing issues by having users connect it to their Spotify or Apple Music account. The resulting streams also mean higher play counts for artists on each platform.

Some K-Pop artists and their fan communities have long been heavy Stationhead users, as is Nicki Minaj. Zane Malik is one of the artists who has hosted official listening parties and live meetups with fans and now the growing adoption by Taylor Swift fans could push the app to the next level.

We’ve used Stationhead multiple times as a listener and a broadcaster. Its ease of use and the fact that it’s free to leave me wondering why more artists aren’t using it regularly.

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.