Apparently, Aphex Twin has more monthly listeners on Youtube than Taylor Swift.
‘What? How can that be?’ we hear you cry. Taylor Swift is the biggest pop star in the world and Richard D James, popular though he is, is nowhere near that league. Here, though, are the stats: Taylor Swift’s has 399 million monthly listeners on the platform’s streaming service Youtube Music whilst and Aphex Twin has 448 million.
However, the reason for this surprising stat could be the way that monthly audience is calculated. YouTube Music not only counts direct plays connected to official artists' accounts but also passive use on YouTube Shorts.
And it seems it’s one Aphex tune in particular that seems to have become a go-to for many many content creators – QKThr. It’s one of James’s shorter tracks – just one and a half minutes long – from the ambient end of his oeuvre and was originally released on his 2001 album Drukqs.
One DJ and commentator Ramon Pang has put an Instagram post up online analysing the phenomenon: “I’ve seen it soundtrack everything from postmodern corecore edits about the internet, stupid meme videos, subtle foreshadowing and hopecore,” he said.
“The track is emotional and soul crushing. It’s got this accordion in it,” Pang says, before wondering whether Gen Z or Gen Alpha will grow up to be nostalgic about a track that was originally released many years ago – and in some cases – before they were even born.
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