Adele hits 1B YouTube views, and she does it in record time

That doesn't mean as much as it used to, as the rise in streaming has lifted more artists to the top

We talk a lot about companies getting $1 billion valuations, and how prevalent they've become over the last couple of years, but there's another figure that's also seeing a huge rise: videos with a billion views on YouTube. Ok, so there's no relationship between those two things, but they both have "billion" in them, so it seemed like a pretty good segue. 

The latest to enter that club is Adele, with the song that you haven't been able to escape for months, "Hello." That milestone alone wouldn't be enough to write a story about, of course. What's important here is not only was it able to get there in a record amount of time, but it also signals a rise in video watching that other companies have been trying to capitalize on.

Hello reached one billion video views in just 87 days, YouTube revealed on Thursday. By doing it in less than three months it absolutely shattered the previous record, held by Psy, with his hit song "Gangnam Style. That video reached a billion view in 158 days, taking nearly twice as long.

Remember when "Gangnam Style" was the first video ever to reach one billion views in 2012? Well, now that feat is not quite as impressive as it once was, although it is still rare.  There are now 17 videos to have reached that milestone, and four of them did it within the last year alone. 

Not only that, but the number of days to reach is also dropping as well. In 2013, Katy Perry’s “Roar” took 487 days and in 2014 Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” did it in 238 days. Something tells me that Adele is a special case, and that 87 days isn't going to be the norm, but that just makes the number that much more impressive.

One explanation for why YouTube videos are getting so many hits is simply that video streaming is on the rise in a big way. Real-Time Entertainment, which means streaming video and audio services, accounted for over 70 percent Internet traffic in North America.

The biggest service is Netflix, which had 37 percent of all downstream traffic, followed by YouTube, with just under 18 percent. Together, those two services encompass nearly 55 percent of all traffic. 

You can see other companies trying to take advantage of this trend, most specifically Facebook and Snapchat, which are both seeing big rises in their video views as well.

As of this month, Snapchat users are now watching seven billion video clips every single day. Only two months ago that number was six billion, meaning it's increased roughly 16 percent in just that short time. In May of last year it had only two billion views. 

It's getting close to outpacing Facebook, which was seeing eight billion daily video views, and more than 500 million people watching daily, as of November. The company was serving four billion video views as of June of last year, so it doubled its views in five months, so it is very possible that those numbers have grown, as Snapchat's have, in the last two months as well.

It should be noted that not all video views are made equal. For example, a view on YouTube means it has to be watched 30 seconds. On Facebook it has to be at least 3 seconds. With Snapchat it is said to be less than a second. So it looks like not all of these platforms are playing on an equal playing field.

Not that YouTube really has anything to worry about. It says that has over a billion users, which is almost one-third of all people on the Internet, it see billions of views every single day. 

A rising tide lifts all boats, and artists on YouTube are seeing the benefit.

By the way, I propose that we officially change the lyrics of this song to, "Hello from the other side! We've watched this video a billion times!"

(Image source: thesun.co.uk)