We don’t talk much about music videos here at The Influencer Marketing Hub. Let’s face it – they don’t offer much opportunity for influencer marketing unless you have deep enough pockets to pay celebrity prices. Still, one cannot ignore the fact that many people love music videos.
YouTube was founded in 2005, the first video – Me at the Zoo – was uploaded on April 23, 2005. Since then, 1.3 billion people have created YouTube accounts. In 2018, people watch almost 5 billion videos every day. People upload 300 hours of video footage to the site every minute.
According to a 2016 study by Pexeso, music makes up just 4.3% of YouTube content. Still, it makes 11% of the views. Obviously, a lot of people watch a comparatively small number of music videos. It should come as no surprise, then, that the most viewed videos of all time on YouTube are mostly music videos.
Most subscribed channels, on the other hand, are predominantly gaming channels.
This post looks at the 20 most viewed YouTube videos of all time. 14 of these videos are music videos. If we expanded our scope to cover the top 100 YouTube videos, you would find that 95 are music videos. And none of the remaining five are from famous YouTubers like PewDiePie.
Blank Space is Taylor Swift’s second entry on this list. It comes from their fifth studio album 1989 (as well as Shake it Off).
The song was released in November 2014 and within three weeks it topped the US Billboard Hot 100, knocking out Shake It Off from that position. Taylor Swift became the first woman in chart history to top the charts.
Joseph Kahn was asked to direct the video. Taylor Swift liked the idea of portraying herself as a crazy villain in the video. It was partially inspired by “A Clockwork Orange” and constant tabloid gossip about Taylor Swift’s relationships.
Hello – Adele (2,976,801,553 views)
English singer Adele released Hello in October 2015 as the lead single from her third album 25.
It was successful in many countries and reached top positions worldwide, including both the UK and the US.
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The music video starring Adele and Tristan Wilds was directed by Xavier Dolan. It broke the record for the shortest time to reach 1 billion views on YouTube – 88 days. It currently has over 12 million likes, making it the 5th most popular video on YouTube.
1Let Her Go – Passenger (3,232,593,643 views)
Let Her Go was written and recorded by English singer-songwriter Passenger (Mike Rosenberg). Let Her Go was released in July 2012 as the second single from Passenger’s fourth album All the Little Lights.
The song topped the charts in many countries and has sold over one million digital copies in the UK and over four million in the US. The song became a hit in the Netherlands after Dave, a Dutch fan, emailed Passenger expressing his desire to get the song featured on some Dutch radio stations, claiming it could be a hit there. The song was trending and became a huge hit with the Dutch.
Bailando is another music video that underscores YouTube’s international appeal.
Spanish singer Enrique Iglesias recorded Bailando in 2014 for his tenth studio album, Sex and Love.
He recorded several versions of the song. The original Spanish version also featured vocals by Cubans, Descemer Bueno and Gente de Zona. A Spanglish version features vocals by Jamaican singer Sean Paul. Enrique Iglesias also recorded two versions in Portuguese (with different people doing the extra vocals) for different markets.
The original Spanish version serves as the theme song for the soap opera Reina de Corazones.
They recorded four music videos – one for each version of the song. They shot the videos for the Spanish and Spanglish versions of the song in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The Spanish version is particularly popular with over 2.4 million views
