Post Updated December 2018 A year ago we took our first look at the 15 most-viewed videos on YouTube. We thought it was time to update our post, to reflect the viewing habits of 2018. According tomusic only accounts for 4. Yet it makes 11% of the views. Clearly, an awful lot of people watch a comparatively small number of music videos. It should be no surprise, therefore, that the most watched videos of all time on YouTube are predominantly music videos. Surprisingly there has not been an enormous change over the last year. Neither song is new to YouTube, however. Thinking Out Load was uploaded in October 2014 while Counting Stars appeared on the site in May 2013. Indeed, it has been a slow year for 2018 songs to make traction. The best-known influencers certainly have popular channels. However, most gained their fame by having many people watching a broad range of videos. None of these genuine influencers has one-off videos with world-shattering viewing figures. Despacito — Luis Fonsi ft. There was a time when nobody thought that anybody would overtake Gangnam Style. It also demonstrated how YouTube is now a global phenomenon. The music video shows both artists performing the song in La Perla neighborhood of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and the local bar La Factoría. The song topped the charts of 47 countries and entered the Top 10 in ten others. It was the first song most popular music videos youtube top the Billboard 100 in Spanish in 20 years. Interestingly, Justin Bieber released a remix version a few months later, where he sang some lines in English. Despacito became the first video on YouTube to achieve the milestones of three, four, and five billion views. Shape of You — Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran has had a hugely successful couple of years. No matter where you went, there always seems to be an Ed Sheeran song playing. He also included it as part of his third studio album. The song made it to Number 1 on the singles charts of 44 countries. It topped the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 2017. It was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards. Ed Sheeran released a lyric video for the song on his channel. People have viewed that version over 750 million times to date. On 30 January 2017, the official video was uploaded to YouTube. The video most popular music videos youtube one of the fastest videos to reach 1 billion views on YouTube. It achieved this milestone on 8 May 2017, just 97 days after its release. The song continues to perform, with only Despacito now having more YouTube views. See You Again — Wiz Khalifa ft. It was, of course, only 25 days, until Despacito made its most popular music videos youtube and overtook See You Again. It was written as a tribute to fan-favorite, the late actor Paul Walker. Overall, See You Again was the best selling song in the world in 2015. UpTown Funk — Mark Ronson ft. UpTown Funk became the second best-selling single of 2015. It won two Grammy Awards, including the record of the Year. The music video was released a week after the single — 17 November 2014. It shows Bruno Mars, Mark Ronson, and the Hooligans walking around cities, kitted out in brightly colored suits and chains. It was filmed in a range of cities where Bruno Mars was touring. The video was almost as popular as the song, gathering more than 3. Masha and the Bear: Recipe for Disaster — Get Movies This is by far the most unusual video on this list. It is not a music video. It is not an official video although official copies of this episode do exist on YouTube. And it is in Russian. This particular video is technically called Маша и Медведь Masha and The Bear - Маша плюс кашаas it is a Russian version. Some episodes of the English-language version are available on Netflix. All of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube over time, and three of them have exceeded 1 billion views. This makes the show acceptable to Muslim audiences, most popular music videos youtube populous countries, such as Indonesia. Gangnam Style — Psy It would be fair to say that Gangnam Style was an unexpected mega-hit, that set records on YouTube, that some people believed would never be bettered. It stayed in that position for an incredible 1,689 days. It reached 2 billion views in June 2014, and 3 billion in January 2018. The video holds a few other YouTube records. It was the most rated video until February 2017, and most liked video until August 2016. It still holds the record for being the most discussed video. He is one of the most visible symbols of the YouTube generation. It is perhaps surprising that he cannot claim more of the videos in this top group, although he does have videos of his songs in positions 23 and 24. The song topped the charts of 13 countries, including seven weeks in the top spot in Bieber's native Canada. Globally, people bought more than 10 million copies of the song in most popular music videos youtube. Unusually, they made the dance video of the song in New Zealand, featuring New Zealand dancers — the ReQuest Dance Crew, and New Zealand choreographer, Parris Goebel. Although this was originally just intended to be a lyric video, it ended up as the main one. It became the fifth fastest YouTube video to reach 1 billion views, and the fourth fasted to reach 2 billion views. The band worked with film director, David Dobkin on the music video. In the video, Maroon 5 crashes weddings across Los Angeles. Maroon 5 has genuinely crashed the weddings shown in the video. In reality, each groom was given some notice and agreed to let an unnamed, but famous band play at their wedding, but nobody else connected with the marriages had advance notice. It must have been a shock to the brides to find Adam Levine serenading them at their weddings. The production team worked with wedding planners in Los Angeles to find suitable weddings for the video. The band found it a fantastic experience. Some of the grooms got cold feet and had to be talked into allowing the activity take place. Everybody loved the surprise, however. I had no idea I would be affected by the overwhelming reactions we received from the couples and guests. The song premiered on a Yahoo. Live stream on August 18, 2014. The studio released the video on YouTube and made the song available for digital download on the same day. It stayed in the chart for 50 consecutive weeks. Mark Romanek directed the video, and it features dances choreographed by Tyce Diorio. The song was a huge success. The video tells a fictional story of Katy Perry adapting to life in the jungle after surviving a plane crash. She even tames a tiger. It was filmed at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. When Roar reached 1 billion video views on YouTube, in July 2015, Katy Perry became the first artist to have two music videos exceed that milestone. Bailando — Enrique Iglesias ft. Descemer Bueno and Gente De Zona Bailando is another music video that highlights the international appeal of YouTube. He recorded several versions of the song. The original Spanish version also included vocals by Cubans, Descemer Bueno, and Gente de Zona. A Spanglish version features vocals by Jamaican singer Sean Paul. Enrique Iglesias also recorded two versions in Portuguese with different people doing the additional vocals for different markets. The original Spanish version acts as the theme song for the soap opera Reina de Corazones. They recorded four music videos— one for each version of the song. They filmed the videos for the Spanish and Spanglish version of the song in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The Spanish version has proven particularly popular, having been viewed more than 2. People have also watched the Spanglish version 250 million times. The song is the first that people have streamed more than 500 times on Spotify. Most of the music video was filmed in the Crystal Ballroom at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California. It was shot continuously using a 16 mm film camera. Ed Sheeran took a more high profile role in this music video than he usually does. He executes a ballroom dance with Brittany Cherry, a contestant from dance competition, So You Think You Can Dance. The video was uploaded to YouTube on October 8, 2014, and people have continued to view it ever since. The single reached number one in many countries including Canada and the United Kingdom and peaked at number two in the United States. The music video features the band performing the song in a gloomy ground floor of a building surrounded by hanging light bulbs, interspersed with scenes of several people in a religious revival service on the upper floor. The video ends with the demolition of the ceiling, with one of the people in the service falling through the floor, coming through the ceiling of the room where the band is performing. The video also features an alligator crawling through the ground floor. The video became the first music video by a band in history to reach 1 billion views, in November 2015. It remains popular, and during 2018 crept into the list of top 15 music videos on YouTube. It now has had over 2. Dark Horse — Katy Perry ft. Juicy J Not to be outdone by Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry also features two videos in this list of the 15 most viewed YouTube videos of all time. Katy recorded Dark Horse with rapper Juicy J, releasing the song in September 2013. It combines the genres of trap and hip-hop. Pepsi used the song in a promotion. The video wasn't released until February 2014. Dark Horse was the first video from a female artist to receive 1 billion views on YouTube. The music video for Lean On was directed by Tim Erem and filmed in India.
