• Spotify has reported a recent surge in Backstreet Boys content on its platform ahead of the group performing in South Africa.
• The average number of Backstreet Boys playlist streams have risen sharply by 280 percent ever since a four gig tour of SA was announced in February.
• The first concert is happening in Cape Town on 16th May.

Later this month, next week in fact, the Backstreet Boys will be hosting concerts in South Africa. Four of them to be precise, and perhaps unsurprisingly the group’s content has become popular again on Spotify.

In fact, the music streaming platform says the average number of Backstreet Boys playlist streams rose by a massive 280 percent ever since the South African leg of their DNA world tour was announced in February. Spotify adds that there most popular song during this time has been I Want It That Way, which also happens to be the group’s most watched music video on YouTube with more than 1.2 billion views.

“The average number of streams of their music and the average number of searches also more than doubled with 103% and 115% increases respectively,” adds Spotify in a press release sent to Hypertext.

“Spotify data from other countries where the band has already performed also shows an increase in the week leading up to the show, so a similar spike is likely in South Africa over the next week, leading up to their first concert in Cape Town on 16 May,” it adds.

Looking closer at local data, the platform explains that cities streaming the most Backstreet Boys music include Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Durban, and Port Elizabeth. 

“Nostalgia is such a powerful feeling, and we see how people use Spotify to seek out the music they love that spans across the decades on our platform, to amplify that feeling. The 90s birthed some of pop music’s greatest hits and was a golden era for boy bands like the Backstreet Boys so it’s not surprising that their music still resonates with local audiences in the streaming era,” highlights Warren Bokwe, Sub-Saharan lead for Music Strategy and Operations at Spotify.

[Image – Provided]