Top 10 Most Played New Zealand Songs On YouTube
When New Zealand artists go overseas, it’s often hard to judge how much success they are having. Sometimes the fact that they have savvy management at home means that even meagre achievements manage to make it into the local media. However, these days we can get a window into an artist’s overseas success by looking at how many views they’ve managed on YouTube. There doesn’t seem to be a clear way of compiling a chart of YouTube view-counts, but I thought I’d make an attempt to list the 10 New Zealand artists with the highest view counts (though please write any I’ve missed in the comments section). Funnily enough, on the same day I started compiling this list, The Corner received an email from a person who runs a site that tracks YouTube hits for NZ On Air funded artists to get a sense of their online success. That link is here and he’s also got data for Facebook likes, which is similarly interesting. However the list on that site misses out some of the big NZ artists that have succeeded without NZ On Air funding, so I figured I’d go ahead and post our top ten nonetheless.
Firstly, let me lay down a few privisos. It seemed unfair to count the Flight of the Conchords in this list, because their success was due to their comedic talents rather than their music (though they’re clearly good songwriters as well). If I had included them then they would’ve dominated the top 10, though only taken second spot (with ‘Business Time’ – 23,610,453 views). I also decided that collaborations between NZ artists and far more successful overseas acts were also unfair entrants (therefore I’ve taken out Hayley Westenra with Andrea Bocelli singing ‘Vivo Per Lei’ which has 11,240,881 views and Kimbra with Gotye ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ which has 13,501,282 views). Lastly, I wanted to only include original songs so Hayley Westenra has also lost out (e.g., her live version of ‘Amazing Grace’ have 5,508,152 views) and I’ve also dropped remixes (which has meant that Mt Eden Dubstep have a few less songs in the top ten, though they still do pretty well!).
Obviously, this list is severly biased towards acts that have arisen since the rise of YouTube, so isn’t a far calculation of a song’s success over time. This means that some of NZ’s biggest overseas hits are poorly served. For example, Crowded House ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ only manages 1,408,262 views (coming about 14th) and OMC’s ‘How Bizarre’ has got 732,174 views. However, you’d be much more likely to find people from overseas who know these songs than any of the ones in the top 10.
In any case, that’s enough justifications for the time being, let’s get onto the list itself…
1 Mt Eden Dubstep “Still Alive” – 24,580,704
2 Mt Eden Dubstep “Sierra Leone” – 12,084,455
3 The Naked and Famous “Young Blood” – 9,035,250
4 The Naked and Famous “Punching In A Dream” – 3,560,860
5 Mt Eden Dubstep “When Will The Storm Begin” – 2,704,826
6 Savage “Swing” – 2,983,771
7 Brooke Fraser “Shadowfeet” – 2,972,394 views
8 Ladyhawke – “My Delirium” - 2,803,108 [though she could've done better since there's also another version with 2,005,513 views]
9 Brooke Fraser “Something In The Water” – 2,838,240 views
10 Kimbra “Settle Down” – 2,845,133
Runner-up: Bic Runga “Sway” – 2,558,423 views [another big international hit that would’ve done better if it’s original release hadn’t been before the rise of youtube]
Hmm, you seem to have given Mt Eden Dubstep a bit of a leg up. At only 2,704,826 views, “When Will The Storm Begin” should have come 10th. And the Ladyhawke one seems slightly out of place too. Though I think you should’ve added together the two sets of viewing stats if you wanted to give an impression of how much overseas success she has had.
Interesting reading though. I wonder if Mt Eden Dubstep actually sell very well or whether this internet hype just leads to lots of illegal downloading of their music?
Probably not going to sell a lot if they can’t get $100k+ of tax money like Naked and Famous.
Oops… I did keep mucking around with the top ten, so must’ve missed that. I guess if you want to count both uploads of the Ladyhawke song then you’d have to count both uploads of Brooke Fraser’s song too. [the other one is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0pMgzYUEwA
1 Mt Eden Dubstep “Still Alive” – 24,580,704
2 Mt Eden Dubstep “Sierra Leone” – 12,084,455
3 The Naked and Famous “Young Blood” – 9,035,250
4 Brooke Fraser “Something In The Water” – 4,946,578
5 Ladyhawke “My Delirium” – 4,808,621
4 The Naked and Famous “Punching In A Dream” – 3,560,860
5 6 Savage “Swing” – 2,983,771
7 Brooke Fraser “Shadowfeet” – 2,972,394 views
9 Kimbra “Settle Down” – 2,845,133
10 Mt Eden Dubstep “When Will The Storm Begin” – 2,704,826
This kinda makes sense since Brooke has hit the top ten of the charts in Germany and that’s a huge music market.
Mt Eden Dubstep have more views than all the other Top 10 artists combined (o_0)
I remember when I thought Disasteradio was super famous with like 300,000 views of gravy rainbow…then I saw the figures for young blood.
Does Mt Eden Dubstep really count? All of their big tunes are pretty much guaranteed to have stolen a pre existing pop hook from somewhere else and then thrown a chainsaw and or didgeridoo noise over the top. They’re not even well mixed.
You say that like it’s a bad thing, Marty.
Haha did I? I’m just looking out for all those residents in Mt Eden whose neighbourhood’s name has now been tarnished by bad Dubstep.
I think Mt Eden Dubstep has an artificial leg up because of people thinking ‘what’s this dubstep thing everyone’s talking about?’ and just typing in ‘dubstep’ and clicking on the first search result.
Interestingly, the same could apply to N&F (though i’m being a little bit facetious here, they are actually popular.) How many hits from confused teens wanting nude Scarlett Johanssen pics?
I propose a test: stick up a video for a band called ‘xxx sex emo’ or something, and see how many youtube hits their video has after a few months.
Christ Im out of touch, never even heard of Mt Eden Dubsteb before this and did not like what I heard..
Not sure if this is a totally fair way to judge overseas success. For example, Liam Finn was on the David Letterman show which often gets over 3 million viewers (and that’s just in the US) so really he deserves to be on the list.
Plus there’s people like John Rowles who had a massive worldwide hit but doesn’t even make a blip on your youtube radar.
The difference between appearing on a TV show and a hit on youtube, is that the audience of the television show isn’t necessarily (or usually) watching the show for the music while the youtube audience chooses to watch the video.
Yes, old songs are hard done by. I’m sure The Datsuns also would’ve done better if youtube was popular in their prime. Maybe I’ll do another piece later speculating who the most successful local musicians of the last few decades really are.
In any case, not sure if your logic about Liam holds up. If the Letterman performance (and his Jools Holland spot) was successful promotion then his youtube hits should’ve gone up along with it, but his highest views are just above 400k for “Second Chance.” This level of hits is nothing to be sniffed at, but it wouldn’t quite have got him in the top twenty as I’ve calculated it:
11 Bic Runga “Sway” – 2,558,423
12 Ladyhawke “Paris Is Burning” – 2,406,921
13 Crowded House “Don’t Dream It’s Over” – 1,408,262
[next I could've put The Trons since a vid about them has 1,346,083 views but it's not really a hit song as such]
14 Tiki Taane “Always On My Mind” – 1,233,848
15 Kimbra “Cameo Lover” – 1,160,184
[Next I could've put this promo video by Pearl for “All I Need” which has 1,390,730 hits, but they kinda cheated by making it seem as if their video was about vibrators. Obviously a good scheme given their unbelievably high level of hits]
16 Fat Freddy’s Drop “Roady” – 1,106,664
17 OMC “How Bizarre” – 1,078,783
18 The Black Seeds “So True” – 1,000,450 views
19 Katchafire “Seriously” – 895,129 views
20 Brooke Fraser “Albertine” – 884,704
Runner-up Split Enz “I Got You” – 867,292 views
I wonder how many of these hits are from overseas? Surely the Tiki Tane one is all from local views? Or was it a hit in Australia? Or perhaps some flow-on from Salmonella Dub’s overseas success?
Ditto the Black Seeds and Katchafire.
@Sam: Expatriate Maori viewings are huge – I wanted to write a paper about it but Bebo (a prime conduit for this type of viewing) folded, so I lost the cornerstone of my research.
how bizarre
Looking at that website that you link to provides some other interesting detail at the other end of the scale.
For example, Autozamm have received album funding ($50,000) on three separate occasions. Looking at the NZ On Air site, it looks like they’ve received about $200,000 all together. However, their video with the highest youtube viewing figures is “You Don’t Know Me” which has 35,524 views. Chickenfeed really.
It’s also interesting to see that Midnight Youth only manage 31,587 views with “Cavalry” (though they’ve been funded to around $140,000) and Luger Boa only get 13,736 with “On My Mind” (and they’ve received about $135,000).
I think this gives a pretty good argument as to why the album funding was ditched.
Fascinating. I haven’t even heard of that Shadowfoot song of Brooke Fraser’s. Am a little surprised some of the older NZ songs don’t have more views – nostalgia is strong on YouTube. I can see how Something in the Water got in there though, damn it’s catchy.
Steph Brown (formerly of Open Souls) recording as Lips in NYC had a song remixed by some dubstep bros and it’s just tipped > 500k in 2 weeks.