youtube
Madonna‘s steamy video for her 1987 True Blue single “La Isla Bonita” has joined the YouTube billion-views club. The visual for the song featuring flamenco guitar, maracas and Latin percussion was helmed by prolific film (Pet Sematary Two, Best. Christmas. Ever!) and TV director Mary Lambert, known for her work on music videos for Janet […]
To decorate their Coachella stage like a beach party in their seaside home region of La Guaira, Venezuela, Rawayana hauled in inflatable SUVs, palm trees and tiki huts — all designed to make the Grammy-winning band’s YouTube festival livestream last weekend more colorful and magnetic. “It’s a live TV broadcast,” says Carlos Framil, Rawayana’s co-manager. “They knew it was going to be livestreamed. It was a prominent part of the strategic planning.”
The plan paid off. Rawayana’s streams, and ticket sales for its upcoming tour, spiked in the days after the first-weekend performance, narrated as part of YouTube’s new “Watch With” program by influencers Bryan and Eddy Skabeche. “We’re seeing it as a Coachella bump,” says Framil, of Miami-based Sound of Light. “And we’re attributing that to the livestream.”
Trending on Billboard
Coachella’s live YouTube feed, now in its 13th year, is the “gold standard” of festival livestreaming, according to Lee Anderson, president of Wasserman, the talent agency whose many Coachella acts this year include Ravyn Lenae, Viagra Boys and A.G. Cook. “When the streams started, most people didn’t want them, or thought they should be compensated. It was a big fight,” he says, adding that the Coachella livestream really took off just before the pandemic, which then boosted the popularity of watching live events at home. “The Coachella one went from people being upset that they were on it to being upset that they weren’t on it.”
Music festivals have live streamed performances since the early 2000s, when Bonnaroo partnered with America Online; YouTube then helped turn live performances into music-business revenue in 2010, when it removed its 15-minute cap on video lengths, thus enabling long concert videos that could be festooned with money-making advertising clips. Artists’ initial reluctance has “long been resolved and it’s an old issue,” says Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s head of music and a longtime ex-major-label exec, referring to a “super-valuable” partnership with AEG-owned Goldenvoice, Coachella’s promoter. “The Goldenvoice team feel like it’s a two plus two equals five opportunity.”
Coachella performances often boost headliners’ streaming numbers — this year, Charli XCX earned 12.7 million on-demand streams in the days after her Saturday performance, a 27% increase. Lady Gaga scored a similar spike; Green Day‘s jump was 17%. As for the livestream, YouTube reps won’t provide viewer metrics, but the Google-owned streaming giant reports huge bumps in international consumption. Over the past three Coachellas, more than half of the views came from outside the U.S., as Brazil views doubled, Mexico views jumped fivefold, India views increased 900% and Korea views increased 1,400%. The festival has scored more than 1 billion YouTube views overall.
Cohen suggests Goldenvoice has booked more international acts in recent years due to the livestream’s global-viewership increases — this year’s lineup includes Thailand-born K-pop star Lisa, Nigeria’s Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 and Egypt’s Mohamed Ramadan, among many others. “I don’t think there’s actually science in representing the amount of people sitting in any given living room in Mexico or Nigeria or Korea,” Cohen says. “They’re not watching alone. You can bring your friends over.”
The Watch With collaboration, adds Christian Oestlien, YouTube’s vp of product management, was inspired by “watch-along” commentary by social-media creators for soccer and other sporting events. YouTube’s research showed 50% of viewers preferred “hearing a creator walk them through a live event than watching the live event themselves,” according to Oestlien, and Coachella posted regional YouTube curators in Brazil and elsewhere for commentary on top headliners like Lady Gaga. “In every market, we’re trying to appeal to local fandom,” he says.
For Alok, a Brazilian DJ and producer, last weekend’s Watch With show with Bloguerinha was a way of linking the Coachella livestream audience with the influencer’s 4.3 million Instagram followers and 1.8 million YouTube subscribers. “This enriches and enhances the experience we can offer around an artist, so this is a very powerful tool,” says Fabio Soares, Alok’s creative director. Filipi Minatel, manager of Alok’s label, adds that the first-week Coachella livestream has led to more social-media and streaming activity. “Coachella makes this massive exposure,” he says. “It’s not only the live broadcast. It is everything that happens after that.”
The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” has hit another milestone, as the music video for the viral hit reached one billion YouTube views. The milestone marks the Australian singer-rapper’s first entry to the Billion Views Club and the Canadian superstar’s 12th as a lead, featured artist or collaborator. In the clip, which was released […]
As part of the multi-media blitz to promote their first joint album together, Who Believes in Angels?,” Elton John and Brandi Carlile are inviting fans to watch the raw studio footage of the sessions. In a first for John, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer allowed cameras to film the entire process, resulting in the 32-minute YouTube short Who Believes in Angels?: Stories From the Edge of Creation, which dropped over the weekend.
As John has hinted in interviews, the decision to enter the studio with no song ideas or sketches was a challenge that initially made him very nervous. The film opens with producer Andrew Watt trying to flint a creative spark from the pop icon by bringing up late 1960s confessional singer Laura Nyro, who John has long said was one of his biggest inspirations.
Trending on Billboard
That, of course, led to the recording of the album’s nearly seven-minute opening track, “The Rose of Laura Nyro,” which viewers can see come to life as John picks out the song’s refrain in real time as his career-long lyricist, Bernie Taupin, stands by his side to help punch things up.
At another point, an excited Watt enthusiastically strums an acoustic guitar while he explains John’s process in voiceover. “I asked Elton how does he write songs,” Watt says. “He sits and read a lyric, he sees a movie scene in his head and then he scores the movie.” Knowing that John also reveres rock originator Little Richard, Watt says he surmised that if the piano man saw a lyric about the “Tutti Frutti” star he was going to “feel rock n’ roll,” which resulted in the appropriately flamboyant “Little Richard’s Bible.”
One of the revelations is hearing Taupin say that he was more than open to allowing Carlile to participate in tweaking lyrics in a new spin on the two mens’ decades-long creative partnership. The film also features footage of Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith rocking out in the studio during the 20-day blitz of writing and recording. According to a release, the half hour’s worth of footage was culled from thousands of hours of raw tape.
In a testament to the pleasure and pain of the sessions, we see Carlile and John repeatedly praise each other’s talents, as well as the 78-year-old singer tear up and toss lyric sheets after losing his cool while trying to figure out how to harmonized with Carlile on her song “Swing For the Fences.”
At another point, John gets emotional after laying down his parts on the Carlile-penned ballad “Someone to Belong To,” a track she wrote to honor John’s 30-year relationship with husband/ manager David Furnish. He also flat-out breaks down in tears while recording the emotional “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” a Taupin-written weeper about the passage of time that that gets him when he hits the line, “When this old world is done with me/ When I close my eyes/ Release me like an ocean wave.”
“Pretty f–king great album, huh?” Watt tells John near the end of the doc as Elton recalls how depressed and despondent he was when the project began. “I feel like my heart’s attached to your heart,” Watt says, patting John on the shoulder and then hopping up to dance along to a mix of one of the songs.
Who Believes in Angels?: Stories From the Edge of Creation is available to stream for free on YouTube now. In addition to the short, fans can also read a song-by-song breakdown of the new album by the two singers, watch their recent performance on SNL, check out the one-hour concert An Evening With Elton John and Brandi Carlile on Paramount+ and hear the duo’s song “Never Too Late” from the Disney+ doc Elton John: Never Too Late.
Check out the YouTube short below.
Billboard Women in Music 2025 The Weeknd added yet another music video to YouTube‘s Billion Views Club, as the “Call Out My Name” visual surpassed the milestone. The achievement marks the star’s sixth music video to surpass one billion views. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In […]
Billboard Women in Music 2025 BTS has added yet another hit music video into YouTube‘s Billion Views club, as their 2016 clip for “Blood Sweat & Tears” has surpassed the milestone. “Blood Sweat & Tears” is the group’s eighth music video to reach one billion views, and the list also includes “Butter,” “Dynamite,” “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey […]
Rag’n’Bone Man‘s emotional video for his breakthrough 2016 hit “Human” has hit one billion views on YouTube. According to YT, the visual for the bare-bones blues pop song that has had a second, and third, life as the theme song for a variety of TV Shows, movies and video games has been averaging more than […]
Lewis Capaldi has finally notched his first video in the YouTube billion-views club. The Scottish singer made it onto the 10-digit list this week when his 2019 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit became his first visual to notch a billie. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news […]
YouTube now has 125 million subscribers across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium, according to an open letter from Lyor Cohen published on Wednesday (March 5). Cohen called this number — which includes trial users — “an incredible milestone that many laughed off as impossible when we first launched. This momentum is critical to our goal […]
It’s been 17 years since Akon dropped his Freedom single “Right Now (Na Na Na),” and this week, the song’s music video surpassed one billion views on YouTube. The accomplishment marks the Senegalese American artist’s fourth clip to reach this milestone as a lead, featured artist or collaborator, after “Play Hard,” “Smack That” and “Lonely.” […]