YouTube has a deep and diverse music catalogue. Every taste is represented and every content format covered – from official music videos to covers, lyric videos to choreography, documentaries to vlogs. The discovery is all yours.
Trends and moments:
Rediscovery:
This year, music legend Elton John and his songwriter, Bernie Taupin, celebrated 50 years partnership in songwriting. To mark the occasion, they launched 'Elton John: The Cut' – a global competition to find undiscovered filmmakers on YouTube.
Connection:
Artists are connecting with their viewers in innovative and unique ways:
- Dua Lipa 'wanted people around her to know what she does, and [having a YouTube channel] felt the easiest way to get her stuff out'. Over 280 million views and 850,000 subscribers later, the 21-year-old singer is now finding herself on the other side of the pop equation, with her soulful, honest originals inspiring covers of their own. To celebrate the release of her new album, she created a mash-up video featuring covers from her viewers.
- Katy Perry live streamed herself for 72 hours as part of Witness World Wide drawing a global audience of over 49 million viewers from 190 countries; allowing viewers to get closer, and more involved, than ever before.
- The Gorillaz gave their first ever on-camera interview this year – and they streamed it live on YouTube. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett appeared (as 2D and Murdoch) on MistaJam’s Radio 1 show. In addition, they created a 360-degree, VR music video for the first video from their hit album, Humanz. To date, it’s the most successful VR music video in YouTube history.
- Demi Lovato gave us a sneak peek into her life and world as a popstar. Her documentary, exclusive to YouTube, ‘Simply Complicated’ is packed with with ‘never told before’ stories and a mission to self-discovery. Filming this video, she says she's created her most important body of work in music yet, while discovering her most 'authentic self' along the way.
Enlightenment:
Lyric videos are becoming increasingly a thing – and did you know that John Legend’s ‘All of Me’ is the most covered song on YouTube? With dozens of uploads surpassing 1 million views – and lyric videos played a massive role in that. One single lyric video (out of hundreds found on YouTube) for ‘All of Me’ has had over 283 million views. You will notice that other artists are starting to follow this trend (Ed Sheeran is another great example for this).
