So why is YouTube still the biggest stage in music?

Ask anyone in the UK what their track of 2026 is and they’ll say the same thing. Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” has had 152 million streams in the UK this year alone, which also gave her a first number one single. But those are just streams — look at how the track spread. Her performance at the Grammys, her BRITs appearance, her set at Radio 1’s Big Weekend, even the COLORS session she shot for “A Couple Minutes,” all happened on YouTube, and all brought people back to the track.

That’s the distinction that matters right now. Spotify tracks what you listen to, but YouTube is where you watch it happen and the industry gets paid for it. In fact, YouTube generated more than $8 billion in payouts to record labels, music publishers and creators in the 12 months leading up to June 2025, according to a figure Lyor Cohen revealed last October.

The bedroom-video pathway, 2026 style

Take Bella Kay, who can make the argument better than any data point. In the spring, she was in her second year of a pre-law program at Texas A&M University, releasing stripped-down versions of her original songs from her bedroom. She released a snippet of “iloveitiloveitiloveit” on Dec. 3 and the song dropped Jan. 11, then it was used in more than 100,000 short-form videos. Her U.S. streams went from 1.46 million per week to 3.75 million in three weeks. The track eventually landed at No. 2 on the UK chart, No. 1 in Ireland and Norway and charted on the Billboard Hot 100 before she signed a deal with Atlantic Records.

Short video did that, and short video no longer belongs to one platform. YouTube Shorts confirmed more than 200 billion views a day in April. For a lot of listeners that feed is now first contact with a new song, and the walk from a 30-second clip to the full track, the channel and the tour dates takes about four taps. Which is why promoting music on YouTube in 2026 usually starts with a clip rather than a finished video.

Who else can launch a song today?

Just two names. They’re both active, and they’re both good people to know if you make music. COLORS, the German company that shoots one artist in front of a solid-colored wall, has 8.13 million subscribers and more than 3 billion views. A COLORS session still functions as a major introduction, hence Olivia Dean choosing to shoot one with the company. Anthony Fantano’s Needle Drop is another good one. It has around 3.1 million subscribers and 1.2 billion views, with more than 5,000 reviews posted. Neither is a label, but either could move a track today.

YouTube is also championing new artists

The Foundry Class of 2026 includes 24 artists across 11 countries, and some are receiving grant money. Included is Wasia Project — siblings Olivia Hardy and Will Gao (the latter known to Netflix viewers as Tao in the show “Heartstopper”) — who have more than 20 million views on YouTube and released their debut album, Nocturne, earlier this year. On the list also are Germany’s Soffie, South African afropop artist CIZA and British artists Meek, Kelela and Julia Wolf.

What do you do with all this?

The chasm between artists like these and everyone else is steep. This year, BLACKPINK’s channel surpassed 101 million subscribers, a margin of 16 million from second-ranked BTS. At the other end of the spectrum, many songs never make it past 40 views by the end of the first week. So there’s the boring stuff: create Shorts for every song, stick to a posting schedule and engage with comments like you’re talking to people in a room. Many independent artists will then use paid YouTube ads to promote their songs until the algorithm starts pushing them to the right audience. That’s standard marketing, and it’s been legal for a long time.

What really matters is quality. Getting views from real users slowly helps a channel, while bots will be removed and they’ll drag your numbers down with them. Any service promising 100,000 views by the weekend or asking for your password should be closed immediately.

There’s a new place every year that new artists’ careers begin. Between the revenue numbers, Foundry funding and the biggest hits of 2026, the answer is obvious.

Author Profile

Adam Regan: Deputy Editor

Features and account management. 7 years media experience. Previously covered features for online and print editions.

Email Adam@MarkMeets.com