What is the most watched youtube video? Difficulty: Can't be a video
October 26, 2018 5:32 AM   Subscribe

I'll also accept a reasonable methodology to get to this answer, as my searches have proven fruitless, and randomly clicking youtube videos that might fit this criteria didn't work out for me either.

So the genesis of this question came from the recently released international bop Kiss and Make Up from Dua Lipa/BLACKPINK.
It has 20+ million views after about a week. Except it's not a music video, it's just the music with a (for reals?, this is the best you can come up with?) image.

Which got me wondering, are they any other non-video videos that have been tremendously popular? Doesn't have to be a music related, but there shouldn't be any motion in the video.
posted by forforf to Media & Arts (4 answers total)
 
I don't have an answer for this, but is slideshow type acceptable or are you looking for just one single picture the whole time?
posted by Literaryhero at 6:01 AM on October 26, 2018


Best answer: It's pretty common for artists to upload "official audio" placeholders to YouTube. Searching on that and sorting by views puts Danny Ocean - Me Rehúso (Official Audio) in the lead with 1.2 billion views. Technically there's a little bit of "screen saver" motion to it so I don't know if that would count.
posted by bcwinters at 6:56 AM on October 26, 2018


Best answer: Found one that beats my previous post—Camila Cabello - Havana (Audio) ft. Young Thug with 1.3 billion. This one appears to be completely static. A cursory scan through Wikipedia's List of most-viewed YouTube videos has this as the highest audio-only video; the list includes things other than music although it notes that music has dominated the view count for the last few years.
posted by bcwinters at 8:26 AM on October 26, 2018


I know YouTube had to change how they encoded view counts when Gangnam Style by PSY almost broke the system
posted by thelastpolarbear at 9:13 AM on October 26, 2018


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