There was a time when the internet made a big deal out of song reaching a billion views, but the days of such easily won astonishment are long gone, with popular artists now clocking in at well over double this number. In this piece, we check in on which YouTube video currently reign supreme in the play count department.
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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0
It used to be that we were amazed when a video reached a billion views on YouTube, but did you know that there’s been 154 videos that have reached that mark already? In fact, more than 30 videos have reached 2 billion, and one is just shy of 6 billion views! The interesting thing is that music videos dominate the 30 most-viewed list, with only 2 that have are not music related.
We used to think that a million of something was a lot (and in some cases that’s still the truth), but the fact of the matter is that a million video views is a drop in the bucket these days. Case in point, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has 43 videos with more than 1 million views on its channel.
But we’re talking about billions here, so here’s the current list of top 10 most viewed videos to date:
| #10 | Taylor Swift | “Shake It Off” | 2.74 billion |
| #9 | Katy Perry | “Roar” | 2.75 billion |
| #8 | Maroon 5 | “Sugar” | 2.89 billion |
| #7 | Justin Beiber | “Sorry” | 3.08 billion |
| #6 | Psy | “Gagnam Style” | 3.29 billion |
| #5 | Masha and the Bear | “Recipe For Disaster” | 3.45 billion |
| #4 | Mark Ronson | “Uptown Funk” | 3.46 billion |
| #3 | Whiz Kalifa | “See You Again” | 4.01 billion |
| #2 | Ed Sheeran | “Shape Of You” | 4.07 billion |
| #1 | Luis Fonzi | “Despacito” | 5.97 billion |
A couple of things to note – First, the only video in the top 10 that wasn’t a music video was a Russian cartoon episode of Masha and the Bear at #5. Supposedly this was never shown on television and isn’t included on any collections shown on American television as well, which may be the reason for its immense popularity.
Second, there’s only one video that made it to 5 billion and that’s “Despacito,” which very well may be at 6 billion by the time you read this.
Overall, the top 10 show that a billion just isn’t what it used to be.