Zayn Malik’s One Direction Departure Boosts Band’s Spotify Streams Over 700 Percent

Zayn Malik’s departure from One Direction on Wednesday has yielded at least one positive: Spotify plays of the boy band’s music are up 769 percent in the U.S.

Global streams, meanwhile, were boosted by 330 percent.

Looks like fans didn’t just want to cry on Twitter about it, and allowed their ears to mourn by listening to 1D song “Moments” in particular.

Also Read: Zayn Malik Quits Boy Band One Direction: ‘I Want to Be a Normal 22 Year Old’

The next four songs that saw the biggest increase in play on the streaming service in the three hours following the band’s announcement were (in descending order) “Same Mistakes,” “Spaces,” “I Wish” and “Gotta Be You.”

Spotify’s head of label relations for Europe, Kevin Brown, noted a “spike of sadness” late in the day on Wednesday.

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“One Direction are one of the biggest bands in the world, with over 1.4 billion streams on Spotify,” Brown said. “Looking at One Direction’s streams in the U.S. on Spotify yesterday, we can clearly see the ‘spike of sadness’ happening around 5 p.m.-6 p.m. (ET), when their millions of fans paid tribute to Zayn by listening to One Direction’s music together all over the world.”

Here’s a 1D playlist from Spotify for your streaming pleasure:

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