ABC/Fred Lee2017 saw all the members of One Direction, past and present, have success on the charts. But which member was most successful as a solo artist? Nielsen Music’s 2017 Year-End Music Report has the answer.
According to the report, the 1D member with the most song sales to date is ZAYN, with 1.4 million, but he had help from Taylor Swift: his big hit from 2017 was their duet, “I Don’t Want to Live Forever.”
Close behind ZAYN is Niall Horan, with one million song sales, followed by Liam Payne with 805,000 song sales. Harry Styles is next with 594,000 song sales, and Louis Tomlinson — the last member to score a top-40 solo hit — with 122,400 in sales.
When it comes to streaming, everything is pretty much the same, except that Niall and Liam switch places. ZAYN’s on top with 350 million streams, followed by Liam, with just under 252 million. Next comes Niall with 214.5 million streams, then Harry, with 182 million, and Louis, with just over 109 million.
As for the rest of the music universe, Nielsen reports that Ed Sheeran‘s album Divide was the biggest album of 2017 based on every measurement, including streams, sales and downloads. Kendrick Lamar‘s DAMN. was number two, followed by Taylor Swift‘s Reputation.
However, Reputation was #1 simply based on sales: It sold 1.903 million copies, versus Divide’s 1.102 million. Those were also the only two albums of 2017 to go platinum.
The biggest song of the year, based on sales and streaming, was “Despacito.” It was also the most-streamed song of the year, with over 1.3 billion streams, both audio and video.
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