The Top 25 Heavy Rock Bands of All Time on YouTube, Ranked by Their Most Popular Video
Ever wondered how various artists from throughout the metal and hard rock communities stack up against one another when it comes to YouTube views, Apple Music streams, pure album sales, ticket sales (back when those were a thing… and when they become so again) and other metrics? Stream N’ Destroy is a newsletter that features all of those things and then some. Compiled by metal journalist and manager Ryan J. Downey, Stream N’ Destroy, which arrives a couple of times a week, has quickly become one of our most anticipated reads the moment it hits our inbox.
Today we look at the most popular heavy rock bands in the entire history of YouTube, but with a twist: rather than adding up every video from each band’s entire catalogue for a cumulative figure, this list features only their single most popular video. Each band can appear only once on the list. Where there were multiple versions of a particular song (band upload, label upload, audio, fan uploads, live versions, etc.), this list includes the single biggest version. Bands that fall somewhere on the hard rock spectrum, be it heavy metal, hardcore, metalcore, some type of punk adjacent “scene” music, etc., were eligible for inclusion.
Here are the top 25:
- Linkin Park “Numb” 1.4B
- Guns N’ Roses “November Rain” 1.3B
- Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” 1B
- System Of A Down “Chop Suey!” 964M
- Bon Jovi “It’s My Life” 852M
- Metallica “Nothing Else Matters” 789M
- Scorpions “Wind of Change” 772M
- Evanescence “Bring Me to Life” 752M
- AC/DC “Thunderstruck 752M
- No Doubt “Don’t Speak” 750M
- Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” 710M
- Audioslave “Like a Stone” 671M
- Hoobastank “The Reason” 661M
- Disturbed “The Sound of Silence” 620M
- 3 Doors Down “Here Without You” 586M
- Aerosmith “Crazy” 529M
- Panic! At The Disco “High Hopes” 479M
- Nickelback “How You Remind Me” 473M
- Foo Fighters “The Pretender” 425M
- Green Day “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” 424M
- Slipknot “Psychosocial” 351M
- Bad Wolves “Zombie” 322M
- Paramore “Decode” 316M
- Skillet “Monster” 308M
- Five Finger Death Punch “Wrong Side of Heaven” 294M
The entire list on the Stream N’ Destroy email newsletter includes a whopping 565 bands, including, Rammstein, Avenged Sevenfold, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins and more. To get access to the full list, and to have data insights like these pumped into your inbox on a regular basis, sign up for Stream N’ Destroy right here.
