Aphex Twin overtakes Taylor Swift for monthly YouTube listeners
The ambient musician Aphex Twin has overtaken Taylor Swift in the YouTube race for most monthly listeners, according to newly released streaming numbers.
On January 17th, it was reported that the Cornwall experimental musician has tallied around 448million monthly listeners on YouTube’s streaming service YouTube Music.
In comparison, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ singer Taylor Swift is clocking around 399 million monthly YouTube music listeners.
The data is captured from activity across all parts of YouTube, such as audio streams on YouTube Music, and music video streams on an artist’s official YouTube page. Additionally, passive YouTube Shorts consumption and fan-generated content are included in the metric.
Aphex Twin’s 2001 track, ”QKThr’, has recently gone viral online, and is being used in the background of much content, which might explain the unprecedented surge in the musician’s popularity.
Aphex Twin has been active recently; he released two new songs via his SoundCloud account in November. This was the first new musician he has released since the surprise 2024 release, From The Merch Desk (2016 – 2023).
Swift has also been in the headlines since her triumphant, record-breaking Eras Tour, due to large charitable donations, which include children’s hospitals across America, as well as a US foodbank initiative.
Her 12th studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl, was released in October and quickly became the best-selling album of the year in the UK, despite a tepid critical reaction.
YouTube Music’s popularity continues to grow as music lovers are consistently turning away from Spotify, the biggest competitor in the market, due in part to the proliferation of ICE ads across the platform.
Additionally, many artists have boycotted Spotify over the last 12 months, such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof and Cindy Lee. Despite this, in November, Spotify posted record profits of $669 million for the third quarter of 2025
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