6 Most Popular Musicians Who Got Discovered Online

6. The Weeknd

Points – 3

This Canadian singer is nowadays one of the most popular singers, managing to land songs on the soundtracks of some of the most popular movies, including 2014 50 Shades of Grey. Born in 1990, The Weeknd, or Abel Tesfaye which is his true name, started posting videos on YouTube in 2010.

His tracks slowly captured people’s attention, drawing attention left and right. When rapper Drake posted some of the videos to his own followers, fame was just around the corner.

In 2011 he released three mixtapes called House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence, which were well received not only by the public but also by music critics.

In 2012, The Weeknd signed with Republic Records and released a compilation album called Trilogy in collaboration with his own label XO. The album includes thirty tracks out of which only three were new songs, while the rest were remastered versions of the mixtapes.

A year later, Kiss Land is his debut studio album which landed him the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart.

The Weeknd has 4.5 million fans on Facebook and 3.6 million subscribers on YouTube, while his videos have gained 1.3 billion views in total on his official channel alone.