YouTube's Trending Games of February

This month on YouTube Gaming, these were the ten games that grew the fastest.

The SXSW Effect: Who Got the Most Out of Their Festival Appearance?

SXSW, the renowned Austin, Tex., conference where film, music, culture, and tech meet, is legendary for launching countless musicians’ careers. Names as iconic as those of John Mayer (who first played in 2000) and The White Stripes (2001) all famously benefited from the festival’s exposure.

How have artists translated their performances into success in recent years? We dug into the data to find out.

The winding road to overnight success

Ask 10 music critics who their favorite breakout acts have been over the course of the festival’s nearly 30-year history, and you’re liable to get as many different answers. To get a broad sense of the impact that an acclaimed performance has on an emerging musician’s career, we narrowed the scope, and examined a group of musicians who have been considered to have hit the national scene following their performances over the past half decade. We selected Mike Posner, the prolific hip-hop producer and songwriter who also penned Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend,” the blues-rock quintet Alabama Shakes, indie-pop darlings Foster The People, and pop-rock powerhouse HAIM.

Daily Views For Breakout Acts Following First SXSW Performance

Views expressed as a proportion of the highest view count, based on sum of personal and Vevo channel totals.

Of all musicians in our selection, none had received as much lift following their first festival appearance as the Alabama Shakes. Prior to appearing during NPR’s showcase, the band didn’t have a YouTube channel. Shortly after creating one following their universally-praised SXSW set, their views immediately rocketed into the six figure range — smartly, coinciding with the release of their debut album.

Alabama Shakes’ “Hold On”

Try, try again

While acts tend to garner the notice of music industry insiders during their initial appearance, we’ve found it usually takes a second SXSW showing to translate into mass appeal.

Daily Views For Breakout Acts Following Second SXSW Performance

Views expressed as a proportion of the highest view count, based on sum of personal and Vevo channel totals.

For HAIM, Mike Posner, and Foster The People, mainstream success on YouTube began about two months after their second appearances.

By this point, all three had either completed or were nearing completion on their full-length albums, and generated enough pre-festival excitement to ensure that the critics would focus on them, rather than the hundreds of other bands. For HAIM, the second performance also meant taking home the festival’s inaugural Grulke Prize for Developing US Act.

The Alabama Shakes were in a slightly different position: they had received much of the critics’ attention immediately following their debut album, which was released shortly following their 2012 SXSW performance. Nevertheless, they also experienced a lift in views (once more, coinciding with the release of their 2015 album).

To give a better sense of just how meaningful the difference between the impact of the first and second year’s performances is, we’ve compared their effects on views for each of the artists, below:

Avg. Increase In Views Over Six Month Period Following SXSW Appearance

Views expressed as a proportion of the highest view count, based on sum of personal and Vevo channel totals.

While it’s impossible to say who, among the hundreds of showcasing bands at this year’s festival, will be the breakout star, one thing is certain — it’ll almost certainly take a return trip to help produce HAIM-levels of popularity.

-- Posted by the YouTube Culture & Trends Team

Agar.io Joins the 2 Billion Views Club

Agar.io isn’t the first game to get 2 billion views on YouTube, but it’s one of the most unique. Twenty-one* other franchises have generated that many views on YouTube, and most of them are AAA blockbusters with cutting-edge graphics like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Agar.io, a 2D game of circles consuming each other, is one of the few independently developed efforts to reach the milestone. The game’s official YouTube channel also surpassed 1 million subscribers.

One of the biggest stars of the Agar.io world is Jumbo, who started by uploading one Agar.io gameplay video every week. In less than seven months, it became one of the fastest channels to reach 1M subscribers in the history of YouTube.

Like a circle that just can’t stop eating smaller circles, Agar.io continues to grow. Sometimes you need fancy hardware or a lot of money to try the latest trending games, but if you want to try this one just head to https://agar.io and you can be playing in seconds.

-- Jeff Rubin

*The other 21 titles, starting with the biggest one globally: Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, League of Legends, FIFA, Five Nights at Freddy's, Clash of Clans, Garry's Mod, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Angry Birds, The Sims, Dota 2, Yo-Kai Watch, World of Tanks, Happy Wheels, Team Fortress 2, Plants vs. Zombies, Assassin's Creed, Destiny, Puzzle & Dragons, and Mortal Kombat.

What Happened on YouTube for This Year’s BRIT Awards Nominees?

Each year, the BRIT Awards honor the best in British music. While the categories range from the best male and female artists to the best producer, perhaps the two most novel awards are presented for the year’s best British Artist Video and the best British Breakthrough Act. What did YouTube’s music fans think of the nominees? We dug into the data to find out.

Here are the nominees for British Breakthrough Artist:

First Year Active on YouTube

First

Studio Release

Origin

Most Popular Track
(by 2015 YouTube views)

Top 3 Countries

(by 2015 YouTube views)

Genre

(Wikipedia)

Jess Glynne

2012

August 21, 2015

London England

Hold My Hand

1. U.K.

2. Italy

3. U.S.

R&B,

Pop

Years & Years

2010

July 10, 2015

London England

King

1. U.K.

2. Poland

3. U.S.

Synthpop

Catfish & the Bottlemen

2007

September 15, 2014

Llandudno Wales

Cocoon

1. U.K.

2. U.S.

3. Australia

Alternative rock,

Indie rock

James Bay

2013

March 23, 2015

Hertfordshire England

Hold Back the River

1. U.K.

2. U.S.

3. Germany

Indie rock,

Folk rock, Soul

Wolf Alice

2010

June 22, 2015

London England

Moaning Lisa Smile

1. U.K.

2. U.S.

3. Brazil

Alternative rock,

Indie rock

All roads lead to London
This year, it seems that much of the talent in the Breakthrough Artist pool hails from the capital, with R&B songstress Jess Glynne, electronic trio Years & Years, and indie rockers Wolf Alice all having origins in London. James Bay, the soft-spoken troubadour who shot to fame after a video of one of his open-mic performances surfaced on YouTube, isn’t far off, growing up in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, an hour’s drive north of the capital. The lone exception to this are Catfish and the Bottlemen, from the northern Welsh seaside resort town of Llandudno (population: 20,710).

Heat Map of Breakthrough Artist Nominees’ Origins

Jess Glynne and Years & Years vie for “Most Watched” title

Daily Views for BRIT Awards 2016 Nominees for Breakthrough Artist

Views expressed as a proportion of the highest view count, based on content ID, for U.K. viewers

If the Breakthrough Artist award were given out to the most popular musicians of 2015, YouTube viewers’ choices suggest that Years & Years would be the winners. The group’s success in the past year, due, in large part, to the tremendously positive response of their single “King,” which was also initially nominated for a BRIT Award in the Video category, is undeniable. After a huge surge in views during the summer, which saw the release of their debut album, "Communion," and the premiere of their triptych video for the track “Shine,” the band’s popularity has returned to a high, but comfortable baseline.

Years & Years’ “Shine #ChooseLight”

While Years & Years’ views have steadied, those of Jess Glynne, whose memorable appearance on Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be” led to a 2015 Grammy win in the Best Dance Recording category, have been growing. Although she began the year relatively low, tracks like “Hold My Hand” and “Don’t Be So Hard on Yourself” have boosted her profile significantly, eventually leading Glynne to become the most-viewed artist in the group, according to daily views.

Jess Glynne’s “Ain’t Got Far to Go”

James Bay, who also recently received a Best New Artist Grammy nomination, began the year strongly, and has been the most impressively consistent musician of the group. Catfish and the Bottlemen and Wolf Alice, both representing the more niche, indie-rock contingent, follow. Despite their relative obscurity, both have produced impressive debuts, with Catfish and the Bottlemen’s “Cocoon” and Wolf Alice’s “Moaning Lisa Smile” drawing significant praise from critics.

Catfish and the Bottlemen’s “Cocoon”

British Artist Video: All Hail Adele

Daily Views for BRIT Awards 2016 Nominees for British Artist Video, Jan 1 - Dec 31, 2015

Views based on Content ID for U.K.-based users

The Best British Artist Video nominees can be organized into two broad groups. Adele, in a class of her own, forms the first: her video for “Hello” has received a steady torrent of plays, and is the fastest clip in YouTube history to reach 1 billion views. Her daily numbers are so high, in fact, so as to distort the scale of the graph, so we zoomed to the final months of 2015 to get a better sense of the viewership details.

Daily Views for BRIT Awards 2016 Nominees for British Artist Video

Views based on Content ID for U.K.-based users

The second group of nominees comprises four videos in close competition: Little Mix’s “Black Magic,” One Direction’s NASA-inspired “Drag Me Down,” Jessie J’s contribution to "Pitch Perfect 2," “Flashlight,” and Ed Sheeran’s compilation of home footage used in “Photograph.”

Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph”

If we’re talking numbers alone, Adele will continue with her customary post-album-drop award sweep. If past fan favorites are the litmus test, One Direction are likely to triumph: they’ve won the 2014 and 2015 awards for “Best Song Ever” and “You & I,” respectively.

-- Posted by the YouTube Culture & Trends Team