Who are the most popular classical composers on the internet?

While researching Youtube videos, I came across the channel of Halidon Music, which has now more than 1B (1 billion) views across 1438 videos, with 1.81M subscribers.

This wildly popular classical music channel, set up by an Italian label, helped me discover who are the most popular classical composers on the internet.

Here’s the detailed data about the channel, which you can find on Socialblade.

Halidon Music Socialblade 2 xxl

Without further ado, here’s a screenshot of the 30 most popular videos on Halidon Music’s channel (out of 1438), which will give us a clear idea of the leaderboard, along with some statistics. 

Halidon Music Youtube leaderboard most popular classical composers xxl

As expected, Mozart is #1. His “Best Of…” video has been viewed 186M+ times over the last 7 years (with multiple other compilations targeted at specific needs: brain power, relaxation, meditation,…). Chopin and Bach come #2 and #3. 

Here’s the list of the 15 most popular classical music composers on Halidon Music:

  1. Mozart (186M)
  2. Chopin (70M)
  3. Bach (44M)
  4. Beethoven (39M)
  5. Tchaikovsky (38M)
  6. Vivaldi (30M)
  7. Strauss (13M)
  8. Händel (8.5M)
  9. Liszt (7.5M)
  10. Schubert (7.4M) 
  11. Brahms (6.5M)
  12. Wagner (6.2M)
  13. Haydn (5.8M)
  14. Verdi (4.5M)
  15. Schumann (1.8M)

Here’s Mozart’s Symphony No. 25 in G minor, from another channel.

As you can see on Halidon’s leaderboard, Mozart is the all-time classical music superstar, with more than twice the amount of views of his Polish follower, Frédéric Chopin. If we add the other Mozart-related videos from Halidon Music, the Austrian composer racks up more views than all his competitors combined! Power laws at work, as in any other field. 

Who’s the most famous classical music composer according to Google? 

Here are the suggestions of Google itself for “Music Composers / Classical Music”: 

music composers classical music google xxl
Interestingly, we see another composer in the Top 10 line up: Debussy. For some reason, he does not appear in the most popular videos on Halidon Music as a “Best of…” even if his composition Clair De Lune / Moonlight (1890, part of Suite Bergamasque) is definitely one of the most iconic romantic tunes ever. 

By the way, here’s a weird video (27M+ views) dating back to 2005, featuring a midi- inspired visual animation of the track. 

Here’s a more traditional rendering of the full Suite Bergamasque, by Alain Planès for France Musique (Clair De Lune comes at 8:42). 

I would also like to add Felix Mendelssohn (DE, 1809-1847) to the list of the most famous classical music composers. UDiscoverMusic tells us that Robert Schumann, one of his close friends, called him “the Mozart of the 19th century”. 

Here’s one of his most famous pieces,The Hebrides, Op.26, MWV P. 7.

Both epic and romantic! 

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