youtube
Even before a disruption in January caused by a looming U.S. ban, TikTok’s domination of video-based social media usage had started to wane. The service’s share of U.S. consumers’ time spent using social media apps fell to 29% in the fourth quarter of 2024 from 34% in the prior-year period, according to MusicWatch. In that same time span, YouTube Shorts’ share increased from 24% to 26% and Facebook Reels improved from 16% to 18%, while the “other” category rose one percentage point to 6%, Instagram Reels was flat at 18% and Triller remained at 3%.
That coincided with an overall downward trend in social media use. The average time spent using social media apps per week dropped from 7.9 hours in the fourth quarter of 2022 to 6.5 hours in the fourth quarter of 2024, says MusicWatch principal Russ Crupnick. That’s not an unexpected trend as Americans move further past pandemic-era behaviors, but Crupnick also notes that average times will fall as older, more casual users adopt social media platforms.
Trending on Billboard
Still, that overall decrease doesn’t account for TikTok’s declining share of consumers’ attention. A few years ago, the app seemed like an unstoppable freight train as its influence spread across tech and commerce. It also became a powerful promotional vehicle for artists, many of whom launched their careers by going viral on the platform. Once TikTok proved there was an insatiable demand for short-form video, Instagram and YouTube launched copycat products with Reels and Shorts, respectively. Its impact even spread to Amazon, which launched a TikTok-styled feed for product discovery called Inspire in 2022 (Amazon announced it was shutting down the feature earlier this week). Music streaming services also followed suit: At Spotify, artists can now post short video messages to their fans.
Exactly why TikTok lost share in 2024 isn’t clear. “It’s hard to say,” says Crupnick. “Is this a function of all the political nonsense going on around the app? Is it a function of YouTube and some of the competitors catching up a little bit? Is it a little bit of exhaustion with music on social video? Or is it all three?”
Whatever the case, this reshuffling of the landscape has led artists to flock to other platforms and eroded TikTok’s dominance as a promotional vehicle. Experts who spoke with Billboard about TikTok’s decline described a changing social media landscape in which the platform remains a powerful marketing tool but has lost some of its allure and potency. For a variety of reasons, consumers are spending more time at TikTok’s competitors, and artists are thus seeing more opportunity at platforms such as YouTube and Instagram.
One factor in TikTok’s decline in market share is YouTube and Meta successfully leveraging the scale and scope of their respective platforms to become serious contenders in short-form video. YouTube, in particular, has succeeded in integrating Shorts into a platform that used to be occupied only by long-form videos. “I think YouTube has done a good job of building an ecosystem,” says J.D. Tuminski, founder of Casadei Collective Marketing Agency. “They do a lot of education for artists and labels about building the Shorts ecosystem that feeds into the bigger picture of music video content and lifestyle content.”
Jenna Rosenberg, head of operations and marketing at Gorilla Management, agrees that YouTube has benefitted by combining short-form and long-form videos. “I think when people are watching the longer videos [on YouTube] they can easily get sucked into the short-form part of that platform as well, and vice versa. Whereas TikTok, it’s literally just the vertical short-form content.”
At the same time, YouTube and Instagram are increasingly seen as friendly to creators. “Anecdotally, YouTube and Meta pay better than TikTok,” says Tuminski. “Also, the TikTok creator fund is always shifting. There are different thresholds that you have to meet to be able to earn on there, and they’re not always clear.”
TikTok, on the other hand, is seen as prioritizing some of its e-commerce initiatives. TikTok Shop, for example, allows creators to stream live videos and sell goods and merchandise. In January, TikTok Shop sales were up 153% year-over-year, far exceeding the growth rates of Chinese e-commerce platforms Shein and Temu, according to Bloomberg. While live shopping may be a sensible practice for a TikTok influencer, musicians tend to shy away from that kind of activity — and as a result, they aren’t flocking to TikTok Shop. “An artist isn’t necessarily going to go on TikTok Live and say, “Hey, come and buy my vinyl,’” says Rosenberg. “It’s just very uncomfortable for them.”
The standoff between Universal Music Group (UMG) and TikTok may also have played a part in shifting sentiment around the app in the music community. In February 2024, UMG began pulling its content from TikTok over a disagreement about compensation, among other factors. For many artists and labels, that dust-up was “a warning sign” that TikTok’s dominance in social media wasn’t secure, says Dan Roy Carter, managing director of digital consultancy Carter Projects. “Deals fell apart, carefully designed viral campaigns became eye-watering wastes of budget, and acts who had built their presence reliant on TikTok were left very much bent out of shape.”
“I think a lot of folks were looking for alternatives, even before all the political things that are going on,” says Tuminski. Artists want to work with brands they trust, he adds, and they will go where their fans are. If one service isn’t providing what they want, “they’ll go to somewhere that makes a little bit more sense to them.”
Things have worsened for TikTok in 2025 due to a pending shutdown in the U.S., although President Donald Trump provided a stay of execution when he entered office. The looming ban caused traffic to decline, however, and pushed people to download alternatives such as RedNote. As of this week, TikTok has lost one-tenth of its U.S. users since the first week of January, according to Similarweb data published by The Information.
Still, TikTok remains a powerful and influential force in music and entertainment. By 2024, a third of U.S. adults used TikTok, while almost six in 10 teens (57%) say they use the platform daily and 16% say they’re on it “almost constantly,” according to Pew Research. People use TikTok mostly for pop culture and entertainment but also viral music and dances, humor and comedy, personal stories, fashion advice, product recommendations, politics and, for 5% of U.S. adults, news.
“There is still huge value in TikTok as a platform for music discovery and promotion, and perhaps their ability to tap into merch, ticketing, and conversion to paid streaming will usher a second coming,” says Carter. “But its days of being the only horse are seemingly coming to an end.”
Imagine Dragons scored their fifth billion-view YouTube video this week when their 2017 single “Whatever It Takes” crossed the 10-digit rubicon. The beat-inflected rock anthem that topped-out at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of that year is spotlighted in the water-logged visual co-directed by the band’s frequent collaborator, Matt Eastin (“On Top Of the World,” “Believer,” “Roots”).
It opens with singer Dan Reynolds swimming through a flooded room past curios from the Overlook Hotel, the infamous site of the murderous action in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It then smash-cuts to Reynolds launching into the song’s rapid-fire first verse in the same, now bone-dry, room, singing, “Falling too fast to prepare for this/ Tripping in the world could be dangerous/ Everybody circling, it’s vulturous/ Negative, nepotist.”
As the rest of the band joins him and the lights come up, things appear to be progressing toward a typical performance-style video. Then, all hell breaks loose. The ceiling begins to cave in and debris rains down all around, even as the group soldiers on and Reynolds leans into the chorus: “Whatever it takes/ ‘Cause I love the adrenaline in my veins/ I do whatever it takes/ ‘Cause I love how it feels when I break the chains.”
Trending on Billboard
Cue the rain. As a downpour drenches the men mid-song, the gentle shower turns into a torrent, with the water slowly rising to their knees, then their chests, as a pair of spooky sirens dive into the now chin-high flood. Struggling to hold their instruments high enough to avoid the deluge, the men finally submit, slipping under the waves, with Reynolds continuing to sing, fully submerged while the women pull at his sleeves.
After a silent scene of the rockers floating listlessly in the water, Eastin (and co-director Aaron Hymes) switch up the elements and transport the guys to a desert scene in which the contents of the room are aflame, including Reynolds’ mic stand, as well as the drum kit and Dan Sermon’s guitar. The clip from the group’s third album, Evolve, went on to win the best rock video award at the 2018 MTV VMAs.
Watch the “Whatever It Takes” video below.
Not long after Lil Tecca released his fifth album Plan A last September, he visited a boisterous livestreamer named Tylil, who has more than 300,000 followers on Twitch. “We wanted to portray Tecca’s personality, which is sometimes a little too shielded,” says Giuseppe Zappala, who manages the rapper. “And streamers have been recognized at the top of the hierarchy in the digital landscape.”
Livestreaming was once dominated by gamers, which limited the ways that artists could engage with the Twitch ecosystem. But the landscape has diversified over time. When Tecca met up with Tylil, the two played paintball together; later, the streamer gave the 22-year-old rapper a driving lesson, even though Tecca didn’t have a driver’s license. (“Do not press on the gas hard… I know you play a lot of car games; this is a real car.”) Everything was captured on camera in real time, and the resulting “relatable” videos, Zappala says, remind viewers “that Tecca is a down-to-earth, funny person.”
A lot of people watch streamers like Tylil, Kai Cenat, PlaqueBoyMax, Duke and IShowSpeed when they’re live. Still, relying only on a live audience limits their reach. “Core fans will watch hours of streams,” says Rafael Rocha, CEO of the marketing agency NuWave Digital. “Everybody else will consume that content mainly in short-form video.”
Trending on Billboard
Music marketers are increasingly focused on facilitating that second wave of engagement, which they do by snipping out the highlights of livestreams — either relying on their own teams of editors; “clippers” who congregate on Discord; or AI programs — and then promoting those bite-sized videos across TikTok, Instagram, X and more.
“Twitch is, in many ways, the new live TV,” says Alec Henderson, head of digital at APG. “And the clips from the livestreams are just like TV reruns. Those highly engaged, entertaining moments can live online forever.”
Henderson saw the value of livestreams when he brought the rapper Lil Baby on to Cenat’s stream back in the fall of 2022: “It ended up one of the most fruitful parts of our rollout,” he says. Last year, livestreamers led to boosts for APG acts like BabyChiefDoit and Flawed Mangoes. A recent press release promoting DDG‘s new single “The Method” credits the rapper’s appearance on PlaqueBoyMax’s livestream with jump-starting the track: “Immediately, clips of the recording went viral across socials and garnered over 1 million views on TikTok alone.”
The clipping practice has been popular in the Twitch streaming community for some time, according to Parker Ulry, who runs the digital marketing agency Perfect Circle. “The podcast community is super on it now, and music is falling in line.”
“Ideally, someone discovers your Twitch stream or podcast interview through a 30-second clip and then goes back and consumes the whole piece,” Ulry continues. “Then they become a fan of you and start streaming your music.”
Artists have several options when they want to reach the livestreaming audience, according to Alex Falck, head of commercial at the digital marketing company Creed Media. They can get streamers to play their music and react to it on camera; let them use their music for highlight compilations; actually go on the livestream to hang out; and even produce music with the streamer. (This is how PlaqueBoyMax has built his following; Henderson predicts that “it’s just a matter of time before a hit record comes out of one of those streams.”)
Once the stream is underway, the captivating moments need to be isolated and extracted. “If you’re on a three-hour stream, that’s a content goldmine — 20, 30, 50 posts,” Ulry says.
Some digital marketers do the clipping in-house. But many find armies of capable clippers on the messaging platform Discord. “A lot of these niche underground communities are naturally congregating on Discord already,” says Vanessa Sheldon, a digital marketer at Forever Music Group who works on a lot of clipping campaigns. “Discord allows developers to build things into these servers and communities, so we created our own server, got a lot of those kids in there, and then built the tool kit for them to participate in these campaigns and get paid out.”
Clippers she works with are compensated based on the performance of their videos. Usually, the rate is between 30 cents and 50 cents per thousand views, though it can go as high as 70 cents in some cases. This means that the roughly 2,000 members of the Discord community she assembled are incentivized to make their clips as eye-catching as possible. “The more viral your video is,” Sheldon says, “the more you get paid.”
Marketers can also use AI-powered tools to create the clips for them. “OpusClip will spit out a bunch of content for you automatically with edited subtitles,” Falck explains. The results may be haphazard, but they are delivered quickly. “AI is still somewhat new, so it doesn’t necessarily get the same level of attention or amazing editing as if you use your in-house team,” Falck continues. “It’s more of a volume game, pushing out 100 assets per stream, just seeing what takes off.”
Once the clips are in hand, “Start pumping them onto TikTok, Instagram, even YouTube Shorts, these algorithmically powered platforms,” Ulry says. One natural ally in this effort is fan pages, which are dedicated to posting nonstop about a particular artist or group of artists. (These accounts can be created by the artist or their team, or run by enthusiastic civilians with lots of time on their hands.) Another is what Falck calls “community pages” — accounts dedicated to a specific genre of music, for example. They all help create what Zappala describes as “an explosion of content that’s circulating the internet” in the wake of the livestream, raising awareness and hopefully hooking potential fans.
One manager recently asked Mayor Cohen, a digital marketer, if he could organize a “tour” of five to 10 livestreamers for an artist. “That’s kind of the business: Get artists on the stream, then repurpose content,” Cohen says. “Not that many people will watch a four-hour stream. But they will go on TikTok or Instagram and watch the best clips.”
“If the clip is reactive,” Ulry adds, “it’ll find an audience.”
Time to head over to Bruno Mars and ROSÉ’s “APT.” for a celebration. The high-energy track has officially reached the one billion views mark on YouTube, the video platform announced this week. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Just 105 days after its release in October 2024, the […]
The video for System of a Down‘s 2002 heavy metal math rock anthem “Toxicity” has hit one billion views on YouTube. The second single from SOAD’s second album finds the band best known for their embrace of urgent, tricky-time signatures raging against the machine; it is their second visual to reach the billie mark, following […]
YouTube and Google, together with Google.org, are contributing $15 million toward relief efforts aiding those impacted by the Los Angeles-area wildfires. The contribution will go to organizations including Emergency Network Los Angeles, American Red Cross and the Center for Disaster Recovery.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan made the announcement in a blog post on Wednesday, Jan. 15.
“Los Angeles is the heart of entertainment and storytelling and has an impact on culture all overthe world. It’s also where many YouTube creators, artists, partners and our employees callhome. Like so many, we’ve been heartbroken by the devastation from the wildfires and want todo our part to support the community as it rebuilds,” Mohan wrote.
Trending on Billboard
He also outlined other efforts Google is making to help aid relief efforts.
“Together with Google.org, YouTube and Google are contributing $15 million to organizationsproviding immediate relief in LA, including Emergency Network Los Angeles, American RedCross and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. And Google is providing accurate and timelyinformation to LA through products and services like Google Search, Google Maps and Waze.
“When it’s safe to reopen our offices in LA, we plan to offer YouTube production facilities toimpacted creators and artists as they begin to recover and rebuild their businesses. In thecoming months, we’ll also host a number of events to bring the YouTube creative communitytogether – making space to connect and share resources.
Mohan ended the blog post by saying, “On the long road ahead, we’ll continue to support recovery and rebuilding efforts alongside our partners across the industry. In moments like these, we see the power of communities coming together to support each other – and the strength and resilience of the YouTube community is like no other.”
Google and YouTube join numerous other organizations that are helping those who lives, homes and businesses have been impacted by the Los Angeles-area wildfires. The announcement follows recent announcements from companies including Amazon, which committed $10 million to relief efforts. Sony Group Corporation previously announced it would donate $5 million to wildfire relief efforts, while the Warner Music Group/Blavatnik Family Foundation Social Justice Fund pledged $1 million.
The wildfires began Jan. 7 in the Pacific Palisades area just outside of Los Angeles, and swiftly spread to areas including Runyon Canyon and Altadena. The wildfires have swept through at least 40,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area and killed at least 25 people, according to NBC News. The Los Angeles area is still on high alert as of Wednesday, Jan. 15.
The wintry video for Wham!‘s beloved holiday hit “Last Christmas” has joined YouTube billion-views club. Fittingly, the feat for the song originally released in 1984 comes just after the track skated to the top of the U.K. charts for the second year in a row during the holiday season.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Written and produced by late singer George Michael, the song first hit No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart in 2021, marking the fifth No. 1 for the duo that also included singer Andrew Ridgeley. Shot in Switzerland by director Andrew Morahan (“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”), the playful clip features the two singers enjoying a fun ski vacation with their girlfriends.
Though the pair and their significant others are all smiles as they pile into a cable car to enjoy some Christmas R&R in a picturesque chalet, trimming the tree, lobbing snowballs at each other and enjoying a festive meal, it becomes clear through furtive glances and a tell-tale glittery brooch that Ridgeley’s significant other has an unspecified romantic past with Michael.
Trending on Billboard
Pining for what appears to be a lost love, Michael sings, “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart/ But the very next day, you gave it away/ This year, to save me from tears/ I’ll give it to someone special.”
“Last Christmas” is the first Wham! video to join the YT billion club, joining Michael’s 1984 debut solo hit from that same year, “Careless Whisper.”
According to the U.K. Official Charts report, with its No. 1 slot in December, “Last Christmas” became the first song in the chart’s history to snag two consecutive Christmas No. 1 slots; in its release year, the song was blocked from the top spot by the all-star Band-Aid song “Do You Know It’s Christmas?,” which featured vocals from Michael. It finally hit the Christmas No. 1 in 2023, marking the longest trip to the top holiday spot at 39 years; it first hit No. 1 on the New Year’s Day charts for the week ending January 7, 2021.
Watch the “Last Christmas” video below.
K-hip-hop star Jay Park is asking a U.S. court to force Google to unmask an anonymous YouTube user so he can sue in Korean court, citing allegedly defamatory internet videos linking him to drug traffickers and disparaging Korean-Americans.
Attorneys for the American-born Park say a YouTube account transliterated as Bburingsamuso has subjected the artist to a “malicious” campaign of videos, including one claiming he works with Chinese mobsters to import drugs and another suggesting Korean-Americans like Park “exploit” the country with illegal activities.
Park’s lawyers have already filed a defamation lawsuit in Korea, but in a petition filed Thursday (Jan. 9) in California federal court, they say that the foreign lawsuit “cannot proceed” without a U.S. subpoena forcing Google to hand over the user’s identity.
Trending on Billboard
“The defamatory statements falsely accuse Jay Park of being involved with organized crime, drug trafficking, and unethical conduct, all of which have caused significant harm to his reputation and professional endeavors,” the singer’s attorneys write. “Despite extensive efforts to identify the anonymous YouTuber through publicly available information, Jay Park has been unsuccessful to date. Consequently, Jay Park now seeks the assistance of this court.”
Google could legally object to such a request, including by potentially arguing that the subpoena would violate the First Amendment and its protections for anonymous speech. But Park’s attorneys say the U.S. Constitution simply doesn’t apply since they “strongly” believe the poster lives in Korea.
“Jay Park is not attempting to infringe on the anonymous YouTuber’s First Amendment rights because the anonymous YouTuber appears to be a citizen of Southern Korea,” the filing says. Park’s lawyers cite an earlier precedent that says U.S. legal protection for free speech “doesn’t reflect a U.S. policy of protecting free speech around the world.”
As K-pop and other Korean music have exploded in global popularity over the past decade — and with it an intensely enthusiastic online fan culture — numerous stars have turned to Korea’s strict defamation laws to fight back against what they say are false statements about them on the internet.
In 2019, HYBE (then Big Hit Entertainment) filed criminal cases alleging “personal attacks” on the superstar band BTS. In 2022, Big Hit did so again over “malicious postings” about BTS, even asking the group’s famous fan “army” to help gather evidence. YG Entertainment, the label behind BLACKPINK, has also filed its own complaint against “internet trolls,” accusing them of “spreading groundless rumours about our singers.”
It’s also not the first time such litigants have turned to the U.S. courts to help. In March, the K-pop group NewJeans filed a similar petition in California federal court, seeking to unmask a YouTube user so that the band could press for criminal charges in Korea over “derogatory” videos.
In that case — filed by the same lawyer who represents Park in his case filed this week — a judge eventually granted the subpoena. But it’s unclear from court records the extent to which Google has complied with it.
A Google spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Park’s petition. But in a policy statement regarding government requests for personal information, the company says: “Google carefully reviews each request to make sure it satisfies applicable laws. If a request asks for too much information, we try to narrow it, and in some cases we object to producing any information at all.”
Talk about a sweet dream come true! Eurythmics’ music video for their classic 1983 hit, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” has surpassed one billion YouTube views. It marks the British synth-pop duo’s first clip to enter the Billion Views Club. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news […]
BTS’ latest accomplishment is smooth like butter! The group notched their seventh entry into YouTube‘s Billion Views club with their 2021 music video for “Butter.” Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Their previous videos to hit one billion views on the platform include “Dynamite,” “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey and “DNA,” among […]