When you think of the biggest Eurovision hit of all time, one of two lines might spring to mind: “Waterloo – promise to love you for ever more,” if you are a fan; “Waterloo – couldn’t escape if I wanted to,” if you are not.

But whatever your take on the song, it appears its popularity endures well into the digital age.

Digital single sales data provided by Nielsen Music, covering 21 countries, shows that Waterloo has been downloaded more than 450,000 times in the past decade, making it the third-highest-selling Eurovision winner in terms of digital sales in that period.

Just two other songs – Euphoria by Loreen, which won for Sweden in 2012 (1.1m digital sales), and 2010’s German winner, Satellite, sung by Lena Meyer-Landrut, (644,000) – have done better.

While winning songs tend to sell well in their country of origin, they need to travel if they are to make a big commercial splash – in particular, to Germany, the UK and the US.

More than a third of Euphoria’s paid downloads were in Germany, and 19% were in the UK. Satellite was also hugely successful in Germany (its home turf), which accounted for two-thirds of its digital sales. The enduring success of Waterloo, meanwhile, can be partly attributed to the US, where it had close to a quarter of a million downloads since mid-2004.

Helena Kosinski, vice president of client solutions at Nielsen Music, says cross-European popularity is vital for commercial success: “Songs sung in English are the biggest sellers overall.” Indeed, English-language songs account for the 11 most-downloaded songs in the survey.

A similar pattern emerges with Spotify plays: of the 10 most-played Eurovision winners on the streaming website, nine are English-language songs.

The exception, in 10th place, is the 1991 Swedish winner, Fångad av en Stormvind by Carola, which has had more than 5m Spotify plays to date (although this may be in part a result of Spotify’s popularity in Sweden, where it was launched in 2008).

There are some inherent biases towards songs from western Europe : the digital download markets covered by Nielsen Music are all in western Europe; and Spotify is not available in much of eastern Europe, including Russia, Serbia and the Ukraine.

The list of the 10 most-streamed songs is different from that of the 10 most downloaded, but only slightly.

Euphoria takes the top spot again, with almost 100m Spotify plays at the time of writing. Heroes, the 2015 Swedish winner, comes in second at 75.4m plays, ahead of the 2013 victor Only Teardrops (25.2m) and Satellite (22.8m). Waterloo takes fifth place with 15.1m plays – not bad for a 42-year-old song. All together now: “The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself … ”

Methodology

Download sales Source: Nielsen Music. The figures cover digital download track sales in 21 markets (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada) from mid-2005 to the first week of May 2016, except for the US (mid-2004 onwards) and Canada (early-2005 onwards). The Nielsen figures may differ from other chart providers. Nielsen’s data serves as a major source for the Billboard charts in the US and Canada. These figures exclude physical sales and album sales.

Spotify downloads Total cumulative plays on Spotify as of 9 May 2016. Foreign-language versions, covers and karaoke versions are not included in the total.