After releasing his debut album Odisea last year, reggaeton romántico poster boy Ozuna has quickly become one of the biggest figures in reggaeton. If you need proof of his staying power, here’s a non-comprehensive list of his recent feats: He secured awards for Latin Artist of the Year and Top Latin Album at the 2018 Billboard Music Awards and was recognized as the Best New Latin Artist at the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards. Now he has one more thing to boast about: He’s also YouTube’s top artist of 2018 so far.
A YouTube representative shared a few stats with Remezcla that show Ozuna’s official artist channel has about 2.7 billion views since June 8, 2018, which is the most views any artist channel has received across their uploads this year. His most popular content includes his song “Se Preparó” with 800,019,141 views, his track “El Farsante” with 770,443,802 views (the remix with Romeo Santos trails closely behind with 704,218,341 views), and the video for “Síguelo Bailando,” which has 727,074,327 views.
The crazy thing is these are just on Ozuna’s official page. YouTube uses a tool called Artist Insights to track other videos that don’t appear his channel, and if you factor that in, he actually has about 4.9 billion views. His collaboration with Dominican artist Natti Natasha, which was published on the Pina Records YouTube channel, alone has been seen more than 1 billion times.
These astronomical numbers are a testament to Latinos’ continued dominance on streaming platforms. Last year, Latino artists were behind seven of YouTube’s most streamed music videos, and according to Billboard, Latin music’s streaming revenue grew 54 percent year-over-year in 2017. So, next time your non-Latino friend says they’re not familiar with Ozuna, tell them to Google it.
The year isn’t over yet, so we’re gonna see in the next few months how much bigger Ozuna continues to get. There’s no limit to what that baby voice can do.