YouTube Video Stats, Sharing, and 2007 Re-Mixed

destinyland writes "YouTube's most popular videos in 2007 were a bunch of major label music videos, and YouTube is scrambling to re-assure the net roots community with an alternate list of 2007's "Most Memorable" videos. 'The rankings, released by YouTube on Thursday, took into account the most shared, most discussed, top rated and general popularity of clips...' One article argues that the real trend in 2007 was viral re-mixes of the original viral videos. 'In 2007 the viral video stars spawned their own wave of counter-memes, proving once again that the internet moves in mysterious ways.'"

Comments

YouTube needs an "off-topic/deceptive" flag

[Animats]

YouTube needs some kind of flagging system:

1. Clip is not even vaguely related to title or description.
2. Clip is a collection of stills.
3. Clip contains pirated video with crap music replacing the original.
4. Clip contains pirated audio with crap video replacing the original.
5. Clip contains ads.
6. Clip contains logo overlays.

These Videos Cost Youtube Money

[illectro]

All those major label videos are costing Youtube money to show, that's why embedding is disabled for many of those most viewed videos - because they have to pay a cut of the Ad revenue, and with embedded videos they're not getting any direct ad revenue. This is exactly why youtube wants to promote its 'alternate' list, because otherwise the bloggers won't be able to embed any of the top videos on their pages and drive traffic to youtube.

Links to videos

[jgannon]

Since TFA didn't provide any links, here are all of the videos mentioned. A lot of these are old favorites, but there are a couple I hadn't seen.

Obama Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU
Leave Britney Alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmvkRoEowc
Battle at Kruger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM
Esmee Denters sings Justin Timberlake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Grnh7Qin8
Chocolate Rain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
Nora the Cat plays piano: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ860P4iTaM
Otters holding hands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epUk3T2Kfno

major labels never learn

[fermion]

First, i understand that correlation does not imply cause and effect.

But I wonder why the labels are not embracing youtube more. It seems like the same mistake with MTV in the mid 80's. This was a good time for the music industry. CDs had people paying again for music they already owned, and MTV was pushing the music without huge expense to the labels. Sure the labels had to produce the videos, but that was, of course, mostly at the artists expense. This reversed a downhill slide in music sales. Extrapolating from the late 70's sales, it is likely that current sales would be about half of what they are, and only about half the people would be buying.

What is also correlated is that as soon as MTV became less music and more television, the sales growth tapered off. Now did MTV change formats because the saw the labels could no longer push a compelling product, or did the lack of major label cooperation lead to MTV to change formats and end the cheap advertising for the labels? Who knows.

What is clear is that this decline decreased coincidently with introduction of iTunes and the iPod, and we if believe that MTV made a difference, we can see how things like YouTube might be cheap advertising as well. I have read stuff suggesting that a larger percentage of the population buy music now than ever before. I don't know if that is true. Sure they may spend less per person, but perhaps what the labels should do is concentrate more on populous advertising, rather than trying to extract ever more money out of each customers, which will only lead to the problems of the late 70's where they have few customers that are willing be so extremely monetized.