This past Saturday, Beyoncé’s greatness extended far beyond the confines of Coachella’s 99,000-person capacity festival grounds in Indio, California. She made streaming history, too.
On YouTube, the only site live-streaming the music festival, 498,000 viewers around the world tuned in simultaneously to watch Queen B’s performance, making it the most viewed live music festival on YouTube as well as the most viewed Coachella performance ever, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed to Refinery29. Over the course of the entire weekend, there were 41 million live views of the festival, with fans tuning in from 232 countries.
Although she didn't break the highest live streaming numbers of all time, it's difficult to quantify who has, given changes in connection speeds and services over the years. Trump's inauguration and the 2011 Royal Wedding have both been cited as record breaking instances, but industry experts still debate how to make accurate comparisons.
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Beyoncé made history as the first black woman to headline Coachella. She used the stage as a platform to pay tribute to historically Black colleges and universities as well as Black activists and artists including Malcolm X, Nina Simone, and Fela Kuti.
The aptly renamed Beychella took over elsewhere online, including Twitter, where the term has been mentioned over 2.2 million times. Beyoncé is also, unsurprisingly, the most mentioned celebrity from weekend one of Coachella, and has likely contributed to the impressive 30% year-over-year growth thus far in tweets about the music festival.
These numbers all but confirm what fans already knew: Beyoncé is far bigger than Coachella. The only downside? The festival’s second weekend will not be live streamed, meaning the artist can't shatter more records.
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