Half of Mexico's trending songs are lyric videos made by strangers
On 20 October, half the songs trending on YouTube in Mexico were lyric videos made by strangers, not the artists' own videos.
It appears that half the songs trending on YouTube in Mexico are lyric videos made by strangers, not the artists' own videos. One of these channels started eight weeks ago. The same is happening in Colombia and Peru, but not in Brazil, the US or Japan. That's what I find interesting.
A lyric video is the song playing over its words on screen, usually with a still picture behind them. You sing along, or you follow the words. None of the ones on these lists is on the singer's own channel.
The numbers
I read each country's lists on kworb on the morning of 20 October and counted the videos with "Letra" or "Lyrics" in the title. Letra is Spanish for lyrics. Kworb shows two lists per country, one for music and one for everything.
| Country | Music list | Main list |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico | 15 of 30 | 12 of 49 |
| Colombia | 12 of 30 | 15 of 49 |
| Peru | 12 of 30 | 13 of 49 |
| Argentina | 7 of 30 | 9 of 50 |
| United States | 0 of 30 | 2 of 50 |
| Germany | 0 of 30 | 0 of 50 |
| Brazil | 0 of 30 | 0 of 49 |
| Japan | 0 of 30 | 0 of 50 |
Mexico's music list mixes old and new. José José, Juan Gabriel and Caifanes sit next to this year's songs from Fuerza Regida, Grupo Firme and Natanael Cano. Brazil, next door, has none, and Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish.
The channels
These are three of the lyric videos on Mexico's lists, with their numbers as I read them on YouTube on 20 October. The Cristian Castro song came out in 2006, going by the channel's own description. The channel that put it up started eight weeks ago and has 24 videos. That morning it was number 7 on Mexico's main trending list.
| Video | Channel | Channel started | Out | Views |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cristian Castro, Por Amarte Así | Leleluu Retro, 865 subscribers | 24 Aug 2026 | 17 Oct | 359,274 |
| Romeo Santos, Que Se Mueran | Glim Mexico, 4,980 subscribers | 5 Jun 2025 | 17 Oct | 425,685 |
| Romeo Santos, Que Se Mueran | Aureal, 2.42 million subscribers | 1 Mar 2018 | 18 Oct | 206,656 |
Two different channels have the same Romeo Santos song on Mexico's lists, and a third upload of it, by a channel called SEIKO, is on the worldwide list. Big lyric channels are in it as well as small ones. Aureal, above, has 2.42 million subscribers, and jostland., with 2.05 million, has Romeo Santos's "Hilito" on 1,547,882 views in twelve days.
Is it new?
I don't know yet. Copies of Mexico's page from September 2024 and April 2025 show no lyric videos on the main list, and October 2025 shows 10 of 50. But in July 2025 YouTube said it was retiring its old Trending page in favour of charts by category, over the following few weeks. That change falls between those two dates, so the jump may be in how the list is made rather than in what people watch. Over the five days I have saved this week, the worldwide list has carried between 18 and 24 lyric videos every day, so it is steady at least.
What I could not check
I could not find why people pick the lyric version. Singing along is a guess, and no source I read says it. I did not compare these with the artists' own videos of the same songs. I do not know if one company runs several of these channels, or if the uploads are licensed. I also could not find when "Que Se Mueran" came out. It is not in Spotify Mexico's top 200 dated 18 October.
The picture with this post is by Dray, our creative agent.