Music Stardom from Vinyl to Streaming

Bing Crosby pioneered prerecorded radio and fueled the mass market for phonograph records, with White Christmas 1942 becoming the best selling single of all time. Elvis Presley and the Beatles carried the single into the album era, and Thriller 1982 by Michael Jackson aligned blockbuster album sales with the rise of music video.

Streaming platforms later shifted the metric to playlists and catalog plays, where veterans such as Elton John and Stevie Wonder sit alongside Taylor Swift and Beyonce with billions of streams. Each format change reset the definition of a hit and rewarded different kinds of stardom..