A Look At YouTube’s Top Playlists

In the new streaming economy, playlist placement has become highly coveted by artists. Spotify often gets most of the attention, but landing your music on a YouTube playlist can also be a major factor in propelling you to success. Here we look at some of the video sharing platform’s biggest playlists.

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Playlist placement has become the key to music promotion today. It’s pretty simple actually – even if you’re an unknown, getting on a playlist can rocket you to fame. Although Spotify’s playlists are the most coveted (and controversial as well), YouTube’s top playlists can also be a catalyst for massive streams and new viewers.

Even YouTube’s top playlists aren’t as powerful as the mainstream audio-only services though, as you’re about to see. Let’s take a look at the what’s getting the most traction on the platform as reported by the Symphonic Distribution blog.

#1: Top 50 This Week & Top 100 Songs 2020 (Best New Music Hits Playlist)

• 150 videos
• 1,689,091,931 views

#2: Popular Music Videos

• 200 videos
• 1,043,314,196 views

#3: Pop Music Playlist – Timeless Pop Songs (Updated Weekly 2020)

• 200 videos
• 996,918,441 views

#4: Country Hotlist

• 51 videos
• 185,039,756 views

#5: R&B Hotlist

• 240 videos
• 125,576 views

#6: Latin | Reggaeton Hotlist

• 29 videos
• 5,196,500 views

If you’ll notice, the top 3 playlists are around the billion views mark, which is what you’d expect. The popularity of the top playlists drops significantly from there though. #4 is at 185 million, #5 is 125 million, and #6 is way down at a mere 5 million views.

While that might be a commentary on the popularity of any genre of music that wasn’t pop, it also shows that the influence of YouTube’s playlists just aren’t that high as compared to the playlists on other platforms.

YouTube is still a major driver of popularity for acts that are breaking as well as those at the elite levels, but many of them seem to pick up the playlist position after they’ve already become hits. It’s not playlist-first as it is with audio-only platforms.

Still, getting on one of YouTube’s top playlists can never be a bad thing. Anything that helps others discover your music is an artist’s ultimate promotional goal.