Game of Thrones is preparing to enter its final season on HBO and Spotify has now unveiled some surprising statistics about its own history with the series, as well as an interesting look into the Spotify habits of its fans. In celebration of the associated media streams, the company has also teamed with Game of Thrones co-creators to refresh official content.
The announcement includes a refresh to the rock-laden playlist formerly called “Songs of Ice and Fire” — co-created with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and called “Game of Thrones: The End Is Coming.” The refresh includes seven new house-themed playlists too, found in the Spotify app’s TV & Movies hub. The latter playlists are officially curated by HBO and are comprised partially of Djawadi score songs.
Top plays over the years
From the start of January 2016 through the start of April this year, Game of Thrones related media has been streamed via the service more than 380 million times. That’s including more than 250,000 playlists created by fans, with more than 1.8 million hours spent listening to related podcasts.
At the global scale, most of those listens occurred in the US, followed by Germany, the UK, Spain, France, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, and the Netherlands — in that order. The top five most popular characters in terms of playlists centered around them were Tyrion Lannister, Hodor, Jon Snow, Cersei Lannister, and Arya Stark.
Podcasts were among the top-listens for fans of Game of Thrones too, as indicated above, with the top three leading podcasts including Binge Mode: Game of Thrones, Oysters, Clams & Cockles: Game of Thrones, and A Cast of Kings – A Game of Thrones Podcast.
Perhaps surprisingly, the main theme from the show was not the number one song on Spotify during the timeframe in question. Instead, that honor was given to a track titled Light of the Seven from episode 10 of season 6. In fact, all but three songs from the top ten stemmed from the same season while the title number did manage to land in second place.
Other final season promotions
Spotify isn’t the only company getting in on the hype built off of the final season of the popular series either. Discounts on related media are currently seeing a limited run of discounts across the Google Play Store in support of the long-running show — which kicks off its eighth and final season on HBO as of April 14th.
Not least among those are steep discounts, including one on the first of George R.R. Martin’s still-unfinished A Song Of Ice And Fire book series behind the hit. The digital copy of the book, namely Game of Thrones, can currently be purchased for 70-percent off. That deal will run from April 12th through 15th, while the previous entries in the TV series will be half off from today through April 18th. The appropriately decision-heavy mobile game Reigns has a spin-off title available that’s on sale for 30-percent off from April 10th through the 17th called Reigns: Game of Thrones.
Finally, Google has kicked off a series of talks with Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Brandon Stark) for fans of the series.