Aphex Twin surpasses Taylor Swift in YouTube Music listeners

Electronic music artist Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin, has unexpectedly surpassed pop icon Taylor Swift in listener count on YouTube Music. The Limerick-born, Cornish-raised musician currently boasts 438 million listeners, outperforming Swift's 396 million.

Since his 1992 album Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Aphex Twin has been a pioneering figure in the intelligent dance music genre. In 2014 he released the album Syro, which earned him the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album. His 2023 single 'Blackbox Life Recorder 21f' also received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording.

In 2016, he commissioned 12-year-old Ryan Wyer from Rush, Dublin, to direct his first official music video in 17 years for the track ‘Cirklon 3’. Since 2016, he has been sporadically releasing music on SoundCloud.

This resurgence of his music is largely attributed to the viral resurfacing success of his 2001 track, 'QKThr,' from the album Drukqs. The song has become a prominent background sound for short-form online content, including meme compilations, resulting in a significant 7.8 million videos using the track on TikTok. YouTube Music, unlike other streaming services, calculates listener count through these usages of music on short-form content as well as average listeners.