Most streamed act on YouTube (current year)

Indian playback singer Alka Yagnik retained her position at the top of YouTube’s ranking of the most streamed artists worldwide in 2022, with 15.3 billion streams – an average of almost 42 million a day over the year. In a four-decade career, Kolkata-born Yagnik, 57, has recorded more than 20,000 songs for films and albums and was a seven-time winner of Best Female Playback Singer at the Filmfare Awards between 1989 and 2005. The first of her record 38 nominations was for the song “Mere Angne Men”, from the movie Laawaris (1981), in 1982; her most recent nod was earned for “Agar Tum Saath Ho”, from Tamasha (2015), in 2016. Yagnik registered 17 billion streams on YouTube in 2021 and 16.6 billion in 2020 - figures good enough to see her claim the No.1 ranking in both of those years too.

Bad Bunny (14.7 billion) was the second-most-streamed act on YouTube in 2022, with a trio of male Indian singers completing the Top 5: Udit Narayan (10.8 billion), Arijit Singh (10.7 billion) and Kumar Sanu (9.09 billion). South Korean heavyweights BTS (7.95 billion) and BLACKPINK (7.03 billion) were sixth and 10th, respectively, but global superstars like The Weeknd (5.7 billion; 13th), Eminem (5.06 billion; 17th), J Balvin (4.73 billion; 21st), Ed Sheeran (4.52 billion; 22nd), Shakira (4.49 billion; 23rd), Daddy Yankee (4.45 billion; 24th), Justin Bieber (4.35 billion; 25th), Taylor Swift (4.33 billion; 26th) and Drake (2.9 billion; 50th) had to settle for spots lower down the list as Indian artists dominated YouTube’s streaming figures, which were published by ChartMasters on 6 January 2023.

For the week ending 5 January 2023, Yagnik’s total of 366 million views put her well ahead of Bad Bunny (258 million) and Narayan (249 million).

She has held the No.1 position on YouTube’s Music Charts & Insights Global Artists chart since the week ending 13 October 2022, posting streams of between 289 million and 367 million and keeping Bad Bunny caged at No.2 for all but two of the weeks since. Some 12.3 billion of Yagnik’s 15.3 billion streams in 2022 were registered in India. She was also ranked No.1 in Pakistan (683 million) and No.2 in Bangladesh (709 million).

According to ChartMasters, India is home to about one-quarter of YouTube’s user base worldwide, followed by Brazil, the USA and Mexico. Asia (45%) and Latin America (28%) dominate the market share by region.