Fact: Taylor Swift Videos Are More Popular Than Network TV
Good work, 'Bad Blood' binge-watchers.


Turns out, you're not the only one who watches Taylor Swift's music videos over and over and over again. Nielsen, the company that tracks TV audiences, did a study with Vevo to compare music videos to traditional TV shows on CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox.
They found that Swift's catalogue of music had a larger audience than all but one network TV show, according to Variety (opens in new tab). A whopping 18 million U.S. viewers watched Swift's videos the week "Bad Blood" came out—the only show that had more viewers was NCIS: Los Angeles.
And Swift wasn't the only one to clock in impressive numbers. When "Hotline Bling" came out, nearly 6 million people watched Drake's videos, according to the report, and Rihanna's videos also reached 6 million the week "Bitch Better Have My Money" came out. The other major factor is it's mostly the youths watching the videos—Rihanna's videos were twice as popular as CBS' Big Brother in the 18-49 demographic. (This is a big deal because Vevo wants to prove advertisers should pay big bucks for space on their videos, and advertisers love young viewers.)
The reason they looked at an artist's entire catalogue of work is because it levels the playing field against longer traditional shows, and because they found people were likely to delve into an musician's catalogue after discovering a song they liked.
That explains how you start the morning with "Bad Blood," and three hours later suddenly you're reliving your middle school crush with "Teardrops on My Guitar." Not that that happens a lot or anything...
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Kate Storey is a contributing editor at Marie Claire and writer-at-large at Esquire magazine, where she covers culture and politics. Kate's writing has appeared in ELLE, Harper's BAZAAR, Town & Country, and Cosmopolitan, and her first book comes out in summer 2023.
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