The Game of Thrones soundtrack is iconic, from the theme song to hits like “Light of the Seven” and “The Rains of Castamere.” Every Game of Thrones fan has found themselves humming a tune or two from the show at one point, admit it.
You’re hardly alone in loving the soundtrack. Freesat recently looked at the number of times songs from TV shows are played on Spotify, and found that Game of Thrones tunes had been streamed over a billion times!
That said, it wasn’t the most streamed show soundtrack. Check out the top 10:
- Stranger Things — 5 billion plays
- One Tree Hill — 1.7 billion plays
- This Is Us — 1.3 billion plays
- Game of Thrones — 1 billion plays
- The O.C. — 958 million plays
- Big Little Lies — 860 million plays
- Orange Is The New Black — 857 million plays
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel — 709 million plays
- Euphoria — 544 million plays
- Empire — 476 million plays
Now, a caveat that needs to be made here. Most of the shows on this list use licensed music for their soundtracks — the Stranger Things soundtrack is full of the hits of the ’80s, for instance — while Game of Thrones only uses music composed specifically for use in the show by the genius Ramin Djawadi. So Stranger Things has songs by The Police in it, but a person streaming “Every Breath You Take” on Spotify might just be doing it because they like the song, not because they heard it on the show. But if someone is streaming Game of Thrones music, you know it’s because they watched Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones songs among most streamed TV tunes
Freesat also looked at the top 10 most streamed TV theme songs:
- Supernatural — “Carry On My Wayward Son” — 363 million plays
- One Tree Hill — “I Don’t Want To Be” — 142 million
- Friends — “I’ll Be There For You” — 138 million
- The O.C. — “California” — 99.3 million
- Big Little Lies — “Cold Little Heart” — 60.4 million
- Game of Thrones — Main Title — 46.6 million
- Stranger Things — “Stranger Things” — 46 million
- Orange Is The New Black — “You’ve Got Time” — 28.6 million
- Westworld — Main Title Theme — 26.3 million
- Band of Brothers — Main Titles — 22.3 million
Once again, the caveat about original vs licensed music applies.
And finally, we have the most streamed songs from soundtracks:
- “Africa” by TOTO — Stranger Things Soundtrack — 1 billion plays
- “Naive” by The Kooks — The Road Mix: Music From The Television Series One Tree Hill Vol. 3 — 369 million plays
- “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon — This Is Us (Music From The Series) — 356 million plays
- “Light of the Seven” by Ramin Djawadi — Game of Thrones (Music from the HBO Series — Season 6) – 100 million plays
- “Smile Like You Mean It” by The Killers — The O.C. The Mix Vol. 2 — 101 million plays
- “River” by Leon Bridges — Big Little Lies (Music From The HBO Limited Series) — 238 million plays
- “I Want To Know What Love Is” by Foreigner — Orange Is The New Black Seasons 2 & 3 (Music From The Original Series) — 404 million plays
- “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong — The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Season 2 (Music From The Prime Original Series) — 285 million plays
- “Still Don’t Know My Name” by Labrinth — Euphoria (Original Score from the HBO Series) — 266 million plays
- “Good Enough” (feat. Jussie Smollett) by Empire Cast — Empire: The Complete Season 1 — 37.7 million plays
Ramin Djawadi is officially working on the Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon. If the score is half as good as it was for the mother show, we could have a new contender on this list in a few years time.
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