The Selena and Hailey Drama: Is this the gateway to Bieber’s new hit single?

As search volumes for “Justin Bieber” soared by 9830%^[1] amid the drama between his feuding wife and ex-girlfriend, Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez, it can be revealed that Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself‘ is the highest earning break up song of all time — supposedly detailing his split with Gomez — and has since earnt the singer $7,897,482.29 in royalties.

That’s according to BestGamblingSites.com who scraped Spotify for streaming numbers of the 50 most popular breakup songs. The experts then utilised MusicGateway.com’s streaming royalty calculator to thus uncover which artist managed to rake in the most from their heartbreak. 

The Top 10 highest earning breakup songs

Please find the full dataset used throughout this study, here.

Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself’ is the highest earning break up song of all time

BestGamblingSites.com can reveal that Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself’ ranks first  having potentially earned £6,791,834.77 from almost 2 million Spotify streams. This is over 50% more earned by ex-girlfriend Selena Gomez, and her heartbreak song ‘Lose You To Love Me’ which has earned just over £3 million.

Passenger’s ‘Let Her Go’ ranks second , with the 2012 hit raking in a potential £6,136,483.75 from 1.8 million Spotify streams. This is almost a fifth (19%) more than Bruno Mars’ ‘When I Was Your Man’, which has potentially raked in a staggering earning £4,941,733.87 and was released in the same year.

Olivia Rodrigo ranks third  with the number one single ‘good 4 u’. The hit has potentially earned £5,955,312.54 in just under two years from the 1.7 million streams. This is almost a quarter (23%) more than Giveon’s ‘Heartbreak Anniversary’ (£2,8763,87.17) which was released one year earlier.

Halsey takes fourth  place with the 2020 hit ‘Without Me’, potentially earning £5,729,596.37 in Spotify streams. This is almost a third (28%) more than ex-boyfriend Matty Healy’s band, The 1975, with ‘Somebody Else’ which has so far raked in over £2 million (£2,181,900.23) from Spotify streams.

Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift reap the rewards of a broken heart with a combined total of £4,198,501.75 from Spotify streams

Following a seven-week stint at number one, Miley Cyrus’s ‘Flowers’, has potentially earned a staggering £2,430,647.60 since its release earlier this year. Written about her ex-husband, Liam Hemsworth, the song has already become a TikTok sensation, with over 10 million TikTok views on videos using the ‘Flowers’ audio.

This surpasses Taylor Swift’s ‘We are never getting back together‘ (Taylor’s version), which, after its re-release in 2021, has earned a total of £1,767,854.15. Having just started the American leg of her ‘Era’s Tour’, the media-proclaimed ‘Queen of breakup songs‘ is expected to earn a staggering £500,000,000.