the youtube numbers

the two channels

• arianagrandevevo. the official one, carrying every music video and every live session. this is where essentially all of the view count lives — over thirty billion across the catalogue, and more than two dozen vevo-certified videos.
• the personal channel. older, stranger and more interesting: covers, vlogs and material from before the record deal, including a mariah carey cover that remains one of the most-viewed things on it. it is the closest thing to an archive of the years before yours truly.

the record

the thank u, next video took the most-views-in-24-hours record on release in november 2018. that record has changed hands repeatedly since and she does not currently hold it — which is worth stating because a great many pages still report it as current, several years out of date.

what has not changed is why that video did the number: it was a shot-for-shot recreation of four films with original cast members in it, released three months after mac miller's death and two weeks after a very public engagement ended. people were not watching a music video.

what lives on youtube that lives nowhere else

the two short films. brighter days ahead, her directorial debut, premiered on youtube in march 2025 and went on to win video of the year at the vmas. the extended we can't be friends film is there too. neither has a streaming home elsewhere, which makes the channel the only place a substantial part of her filmography actually exists.

how to use it

if you want the videos ranked rather than counted, that argument is here. if you want the songs by plays rather than views, the spotify table is the better instrument — youtube view counts include lyric videos, audio uploads and live sessions of the same song, which makes them a poor measure of anything except attention.