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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.
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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.” […]
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.
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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.”
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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.
