Burning Up the 'Gram: These Are the 10 Hottest Musicians on Instagram

Daniel Sheppard

Dec 11, 2019

Brace yourselves, this one is going to blow your mind.

The hottest music act on Instagram according to number of followers is…

<drum roll>

… ARIANA GRANDE!

You're welcome.

All kidding aside, you're probably not here to figure out who the most followed woman in the world on Instagram is (yup, Ariana again) – heck, there's a pretty good chance you're one of her 168M followers yourself. No, you're here for the good stuff. For the hot tips, sly winks and meaningful nods in which direction to look for the best and brightest of the up-and-comers. Who's blowing up on Instagram faster than you can swipe through their Stories? We looked at whose follower numbers have multiplied the most over the past year, and this is what we came up with.

As you'll notice, Ariana isn't on the list. In fact, she's pretty far from ever making it onto it, as her following has only multiplied by 1.3 from September 2018 to September 2019. Though that still means an increase of 36M followers, so she's probably not too sad about it. 

Now, as for who IS on the list, the bottom five places are pretty close to each other, with each of their followings growing by around 19 or 20 times. At number 10, there's one of this year's most talked-about musicians, Lizzo, who's gained more than 4M followers on Instagram over the span of a year, for a multiplier of 19.1. We went more in-depth on the rise of Lizzo here, but for now, we're skipping over to number 7 on the list, American rapper, singer, songwriter and Lizzo's mermaid squad sister Megan Thee Stallion. It's been a good year career-wise for her as well, with her debut album "Fever" coming out to rave reviews in May, her being announced as one of XXL's Freshman Class in June, her song "Hot Girl Summer" becoming her highest charting song to date in August, and bagging an MTV VMA that same month. Her Instagram growth reflects that, increasing by around 3.5M followers since April and a total of 4.3M since September 2018.

Bookended between the two divas are a couple of singer-songwriters, Ava Max and Summer Walker, and rapper and Drake buddy Roddy Ricch. In terms of absolute numbers, they're all relatively low on the food chain – Roddy and Summer have around 2M each, while Ava just cracked her first mil –, but as far as pure growth goes, they're right up there with Lizzo and Megan. And we're talking about musicians who have yet or have just recently released their debut album, mind you, meaning that once those records land, the hype starts building and the industry wheels start spinning, we're definitely looking at some major 'Gram power. 

Now, as for the top of the top, the acts that ate the most Instagram vegetables over the past year, there's Scottish Soul darling Lewis Capaldi. His Instagram following doubled with the release of his best-selling debut album in May, but even more impressive is his growth rate. Compared to September 2018, the number of his followers has grown by no fewer than 41.7 times! That's double Megan Thee Stallion growth rate, and with his recent single topping the Billboard chart and a tour with One Direction's Niall Horan in the works for next year, you can bet he won't be slowing down.

Lil Tecca, meanwhile, burst onto the Trap scene with his hit single "Ran$om" just this year, and his Instagram growth reacted accordingly. He's only at a good 2M followers right now, but that's 47.7 times in one year comparison, and the sharp spike in followers in May reveals he basically got there in just three months and on the back of just one song. With stats like that, it's astounding to think what the limit is for him, if there is one at all.

There's another XXL Freshman in the Top 5 of the list – trapper DaBaby also put his debut album to good use. The half an hour of music got him around half a mil new followers in just one month, and he's been keeping up that monthly average like a champ. All in all, he's gained 4.2M new followers over the past school year – 51.2 times what he had in September 2018.

Pretty standard fare so far, you might say – hyped, up-and-coming mainstream artists from music powerhouse countries, obviously their numbers will be growing fast. Well, the top three are where it gets really interesting.

In third place, there's Giordana Angi, a French-born singer-songwriter, who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page in English. Thankfully, we've got that covered as well, with her Viberate profile revealing she's a Contemporary R&B artist who's extremely popular in Italy. Even though she's only got 0.5M followers right now, she had less than 10k in September 2018. Even though she's more local right now, a jump of 54.9 times means you should definitely keep an eye out for her when she starts diving into international waters.

Up next is another fine band that will surely go far – The Cure. Yep, these Rock veterans finally did the one thing that is the single most important step to succeeding on Instagram – they created their profile, and the masses of fans they've built up over their 40+ years eagerly jumped aboard. We're pretty sure they're going to be big sooner or later, so do hit that "follow" button – you'll thank us later.

And finally, the winner when it comes to Instagram growth, in first place with an incredible multiplier of 89.7, Puerto Rican young-star Guaynaa! Just like when we took a look at YouTube, Latin music rules the top. In fact, it's likely YouTube where Guaynaa's power comes from, with his biggest single racking up a third of a billion views in less than a year. And even though in spite of the impressive growth rate and YouTube success, he's still got "only" a good 2M followers on Instagram, it's only a matter of time before the dial starts turning there as well.

Cover photo: Gian Cescon (Unsplash)

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