Baby Dolls claim YouTube's trending music crown
Philippine girl group Baby Dolls reached No. 1 on YouTube's Trending for Music chart with their breakout single "Oohh Lala Baby," extending a run of viral moments for the act. The milestone coincided with the group marking Grand Baby Dolls Day on the variety program "It's Showtime," the latest in a string of chart and cultural events built around "Oohh Lala Baby" and companion single "Ikembot Mo."
Wider streaming momentum for the group
YouTube viewership has powered the surge, with the "Oohh Lala Baby" music video clearing 3.3 million views and its lyric video surpassing 9 million views. TikTok users have posted more than 6.6 million clips using the track's sound, and Spotify has logged 4.2 million streams alongside a place on the platform's OPM Rising playlist. Baby Dolls also landed on the cover of Spotify's Viral Hits Philippines playlist, where "Oohh Lala Baby" sits at No. 3, while "Ikembot Mo" has accumulated more than 4.2 million YouTube views, over 2.4 million TikTok posts and 2.2 million Spotify streams. Their debut EP "Zoom Baby Dolls" has generated nearly 7 million streams, with the project's lyric videos surpassing 13.5 million views on YouTube, and the act has drawn close to 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Alphabet: subscriptions now outpacing YouTube ads
YouTube's subscription business is growing faster than its advertising business, with music and Premium plans cited as the primary engine, according to comments from Alphabet executives on the company's Q2 2026 earnings call. Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said the subscription business "thrives across living room screens" and is expanding more quickly than ads, a point he had also emphasised the previous quarter. Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said Alphabet's "Subscriptions, Platforms and Devices" segment, which houses YouTube subscriptions, Google One, the Play Store and hardware, rose 15% to $12.9 billion, crediting strong growth in YouTube Music and Premium as well as Google One plans tied to AI demand.
Q2 revenue and World Cup tailwinds
YouTube's advertising revenue rose 13% year-on-year to $11.06 billion in Q2 2026, up from $9.80 billion a year earlier, according to Alphabet's earnings report released on July 22. Ashkenazi pointed to World Cup-related advertising, particularly on YouTube, as a contributor, while Sundar Pichai said more than 1.7 billion unique viewers watched World Cup content on YouTube during the FIFA World Cup 2026, with over 550 million of them watching on televisions. Across the company, Alphabet's Q2 revenue climbed 24% year-on-year to $119.8 billion, its 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, and Google Services, which includes YouTube, grew 15% to $94.5 billion.
Shakira and Burna Boy hold the Billboard global summit
Meanwhile on the Billboard global charts, the FIFA World Cup 2026 official anthem "Dai Dai" by Shakira and Burna Boy retained the No. 1 position on the Billboard Global 200 for a second consecutive week and remained atop the Global Excl. U.S. chart for a fourth week. According to Luminate, the song earned 43 million streams and sold 5,000 copies outside the U.S. in the tracking week ending July 16, and led the Global Excl. U.S. chart with 36.7 million streams and 4,000 copies sold outside the United States. "Dai Dai" debuted atop the Global Excl. U.S. chart last month, becoming the first official World Cup anthem to reach No. 1 in the chart's six-year history, and followed earlier performances at the World Cup opening ceremony in Mexico City on June 11 and the World Cup final halftime show on July 19. BTS' "Swim," Ariana Grande's "Hate That I Made You Love Me," Oasis' "Wonderwall" and Justin Bieber's "Beauty and a Beat" featuring Nicki Minaj rounded out the latest Global Excl. U.S. top five.
Follow-up signal: Alphabet has not disclosed a separate YouTube Music and Premium subscriber count, with the company last reporting 350 million paid subscriptions across services at the end of Q1 2026, leaving the next concrete read on the segment's scale tied to future earnings calls.
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