Aphex Twin surpasses Taylor Swift in monthly YouTube streams
The producer is reportedly accruing almost 50 million more monthly listeners than Swift
Aphex Twin has surpassed Taylor Swift in monthly YouTube listeners, streaming analytics from the platform have revealed.
According to Los Angeles-based DJ RamonPang, who shared a video last week (January 15) comparing streaming numbers between the two artists, Aphex Twin is receiving almost 50 million more monthly listeners than the US pop star.
In the clip, he notes that the producer had surpassed Swift in streams by a huge 49 million listeners, with a total of 448 million monthly streams over the pop star’s 399 million.
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As of January 19, those numbers show a slightly smaller difference of 42 million when taken from YouTube’s dedicated music streaming service, YouTube Music.
RamonPang suggests that the recent popularisation of AFX’s 2001-released track ‘QKThr’ on TikTok could be partly responsible for his overtaking of arguably the world’s biggest pop star.
Featured in 4.1 million posts on the platform, 'QKThr' has been widely used as audio in ‘subtle foreshadowing’ trend clips, where users give a preview of the video's unfortunate ending at the start of a clip.
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While YouTube’s stats account for everything across both music video and audio streams, it also logs listens across YouTube Shorts, where many videos are re-shared from platforms like TikTok and Instagram reels.
In November, Aphex Twin shared two new tracks via SoundCloud, both uploads alternative versions of the same track. "Got many requests for this one from a few years back,” he wrote alongside one of the latest tracks.
Watch RamonPang's video below.
Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Associate Digital Editor, follow her on X
