So, remember how Taylor Swift pulled her catalogue from Spotify at the start of November, and people wondered whether her fans would turn to YouTube?
Here’s a new data point to play with in that argument: Swift added the most new subscribers of ANY YouTube channel in November – more even than PewDiePie, the traditional leader of industry site Tubefilter and analytics firm OpenSlate’s ‘Most Subscribed’ monthly rankings.
Specifically, Swift added 819.8k new subscribers in November, up 152% on October.
Some important dates for context: the official video for ‘Shake It Off’ was released on 18 August; a series of outtakes clips were released in September; her ‘1989’ album was released on 27 October; and the video for ‘Blank Space’ was released on 10 November.
It would be rash to ascribe Swift’s big spike in YouTube subscribers JUST to her row with Spotify, in other words: November was big for her on YouTube for other reasons too.
The chart makes for interesting reading beyond this particular controversy, though. Swift ended November with 9.8m YouTube subscribers – subscribers still being an important metric within YouTube’s ecosystem.
Ariana Grande was the fourth channel ranked by new subscribers that month, adding 488.9k to take her total to 4.9m. Meghan Trainor (435.8k new subs and a total of 1.3m) and Selena Gomez (394.9k / 5m) also appeared in the top 10, alongside the gaming channels that often dominate the rankings.
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