Bad Bunny Won Big

The artist some pundits suggested wasn't popular among enough of America just became the biggest halftime performer of all time.

A week before Super Bowl LX, only four (4) Bad Bunny songs were among the top 200 most-played songs on Spotify in the U.S., collectively receiving less than two million streams a day.

On the Monday after Seattle field-goaled their way to victory, 41 out of the 200 biggest songs on Spotify in the U.S. were from Bad Bunny, totaling over 44 million streams. Nine out of America’s top 10 songs on Spotify on Super Monday were Bad Bunny songs.

His 2025 hit “DtMF” is the biggest, with over 5.7 million plays Monday. That’s four times the daily streams for a typical #1 hit on Spotify.

My previous article spotlighted just how popular Bad Bunny is, so it’s not surprising his halftime performance garnered great anticipation. That anticipation—culminating in the performance itself—boosted daily plays of Bad Bunny songs on the Spotify in the U.S. by over 24 times.

To understand just how big a deal Bad Bunny’s bowl boost is, let’s compare his daily streaming against the previous biggest halftime show of all time, Kendrick Lamar.

Bad Bunny vs. Kendrick Lamar

Last year, I spotlighted how Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance, despite your Uncle Dave’s opinion on X, was a huge hit. How did Bad Bunny’s music consumption compare?

• Kenrick Lamar had a head start: Unlike Bad Bunny, whose most recent album came out almost 14 months before his halftime performance, Kendrick Lamar’s album GNX was less than three months old and had several current hits still charting at the time of Super Bowl LIX. Lamar was already garnering just under seven million streams the Sunday before halftime. Compared to Bad Bunny’s under two million streams, Lamar had an almost four times head start.

• Fans pre-gamed Bad Bunny: There was a lot more anticipation for Bad Bunny. On game day, Kendrick Lamar’s Spotify 200 streams doubled to 14 million plays compared to the previous Sunday. In contrast, Bad Bunny’s U.S. Spotify 200 streams jumped the Monday before the big game and ultimately were 15 times higher on Super Bowl Sunday than they were a week before. Whether the bulk of that streaming came from Bad Bunny fans eagerly awaiting his show, or from music consumers curious about his hullabaloo, that’s an unprecedented boost in streaming before kickoff.

• Kendrick Lamar won on Monday: On Super Monday, Kendrick Lamar’s U.S. Spotify 200 streams jumped from 14 million to 33 million, over 2.4 times as many plays as he received on game day. Bad Bunny’s streaming had already grown to almost 29 million Spotify streams on Sunday (over twice as many as Lamar received the day of his halftime show). On Monday, U.S. Spotify users played Bad Bunny songs over 44 million times. That’s a record, beating Kendrick Lamar’s Super Monday streams by 33-percent. It is, however, a Sunday to Monday jump of only 1.5 times compared to Lamar’s 2.4x jump.

In short, experiencing Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance spurred his (then) record setting streaming growth. Bad Bunny, the new record-holder, grew his music consumption before he ever took the stage.

What about other halftime performers?

How Bad Bunny compares to other halftime headliners

Below are recaps of each solo performer at a Super Bowl halftime show this decade. (I’m not including shows spotlighting multiple artists, such as Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020 or 2022’s show featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, and Kendrick Lamar):

The Weeknd (2021) – “Blinding Lights” was still a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and in the Spotify 200, while “Save Your Tears” was also already Top 10 on Spotify heading into gameday. His daily streaming only grew about five times from the previous Sunday to Super Monday, with just under nine million Spotify plays for the day.

Rihanna (2023) – Her last hit from the previous year had already fallen out of the Spotify 200. However, her halftime show brought back 32 of her hits to the Spotify 200 on Monday, totaling over 19 million plays the day after her halftime show.

Usher (2024) – He hadn’t had a Top 10 hit since 2012. On Super Monday, 11 of his songs were among Spotify’s 200 most played for the day with just under 7 million streams.

If the score is how many streams a performer garners the Monday after the big game, Bad Bunny clearly beats them all this decade.

However, the artist who grew daily streams the most on Super Monday compared to game day was Rihanna. Her streams jumped 3.4 times from game day to the following Monday, beating even Kendrick Lamar’s 2.4 Sunday to Monday leap. If that metric indicates artist interest generated by the halftime performance itself, Rihanna stole the show.

So what happens after the big halftime show? Is there anything past performances can tell us about what awaits Bad Bunny’s popularity beyond this week?

How long does the Halftime Halo last?

Kendrick Lamar sustained greater streaming levels for weeks after his halftime performance. Not only did “Not Like Us” receive renewed interest after it is already fading among its core fans, “luther” went from being an album cut to a Top 40 radio smash.

The Weeknd didn’t sustain much interest in past hits, but his halftime show did help “Save Your Tears” keep climbing, ultimately spawning the remix version with Ariana Grande.

Rihanna, without a current hit, saw streaming levels drop over the next few weeks quicker than other halftime stars. Her performance did return her 2016 hit “Needed Me” to the Spotify 200 for a month.

Usher, whose hits had ended a dozen years ago, benefited the least from his appearance. Within a week, all of his songs had fallen out of the Spotify 200 except his signature 2004 hit “Yeah!” with Lil Jon and Ludacris. Even “Yeah!” fell out of the Spotify 200 by the end of March but returns from time to time when we collectively need a pick-me-up from Usher’s shawty-related club dilemmas.

The performers who benefit most from headlining the halftime show are artists with both passionate fan bases and with current hits on the chart. The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar’s performances made what could have been middling songs into massive hits thanks to their super exposure, while nostalgia for Usher and Rihanna faded within weeks.

That puts Bad Bunny in a middle ground: He’s very much a relevant, contemporary artist, highly likely to have more hits this decade. Unlike Kendrick Lamar and the Weeknd, however, who both had hits only a few weeks old moving up the charts, Bad Bunny’s most recent big hit “DtMF” is now over a year old and no longer new enough to have growth potential.

With that context in mind…

Has Bad Bunny gained new fans?

Let’s now see how Bad Bunny’s streaming did on Tuesday:

He still had 37 of Spotify’s top 200 songs for the day, with almost 36 million streams in the U.S. Only Kendrick Lamar—who had several charting hits at the time of his halftime performance—retained a higher percentage of daily streams on Tuesday from Monday.

So far, that’s impressive retention compared to other halftime headliners,

However, consumption data alone can’t tell us how much of Bad Bunny’s record-setting streaming came from his massive existing fanbase ecstatic to see him on such a big stage versus how many people who normally prefer Taylor Swift sampled his music out of curiosity.

We’re not in such a vacuum. Leading up to Sunday, we were bombarded with news reports and social media posts about Bad Bunny’s upcoming performance and folks who weren’t happy about it. The curious among us responded by sampling his music, watching the halftime performance, and learning more about Puerto Rico’s culture and current struggles and how it relates to his music. Perhaps only a few will ultimately become Reggaeton fans, but their knowledge of why his music matters to so many people will hopefully remain.

(By the way, Kid Rock did not make the Spotify 200 at any time during the last two weeks.)

Data source for this article: Daily Spotify Charts for the USA: https://charts.spotify.com/charts/overview/us

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