Top 69 Years by Artists per Entry | Eurovision

Welcome back to another video! This one looks at the average number of officially credited artists per entry across every contest, counting down from the most solo-heavy years to the most group-heavy. I decided on this method over just the percentage of acts that are groups because I like that it accounts for how big the groups are, and the top 4 years under the other system are all an even split of 50% groups/soloists. Please note that this is about the artists themselves and not just performers on stage in general.

For who counts as an artist, I have gone strictly by the artist naming on the official Eurovision website. There are a lot of situations that don't feel quite right (people who really should be main artists not being credited, and people who are much more like backing performers being credited) but if I begin to make exceptions, then they would never stop, and this video would be based too much on personal vibes rather than the truth.

For exact numbers of artists in groups, the websites sixonstage and diggiloothrush do a wonderful job- the only time this video's stats differ to sixonstage is that I've excluded uncredited vocalists with a prominent role (e.g. Norway 1995/2017, Denmark 2001, Montenegro 2013, San Marino 2021/2025) for reasons aforementioned. There are a few weird situations where part of the credited artist isn't actually a performer on stage (e.g. Germany 2013, Poland 2014, Serbia 2018)- only the performers on stage therefore count, which is why you see Germany and Poland listed under soloists.

It is quite funny how relaxed the EBU were on the only soloists/duets rule in place from 1956-1970. They allowed Netherlands 1970 as long as the other 2 members appeared as backing vocalists on stage, but still credited them as the Hearts of Soul alongside Patricia. Spain 1964 somehow got away with all 3 of their names being credited, with 2 of the members similarly appearing as backing vocalists. Ireland 1969 on the other hand definitely wasn't trying to be anything more than a solo act, but half the sources online (including the Eurovision wesbite) somehow think the Lindsays deserve artist status, so they technically remain the only quartet before the rules changed. I haven't taken into account the crediting on the actual broadcast shows themselves as they can be wildly inconsistent, and a lot of the time, even less in line with how most people consider the titles and artists to be.

1956 is a weird case, there are only 12 unique artists so some would argue the average needs to be lower than 1, but for each of the 14 acts there was 1 artist singing, so I have kept the average as just 1 despite 2 of them being duplicated.

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