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Business News Digital
YouTube takes bought views out of its music charts and stat brags
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 16 September 2019
YouTube last week announced it was changing the way it calculates its music charts and other official music stats so that any views that are the direct result of paid advertising on the video platform will no longer be counted.
This was all outlined in a blog post that begins by bragging that YouTube charts are now “an indispensable source for the industry and the most accurate place for measuring the popularity of music listening behaviour happening on the world’s largest music platform”.
The post then states: “In an effort to provide more transparency to the industry and align with the policies of official charting companies such as Billboard and Nielsen, we are no longer counting paid advertising views on YouTube in the YouTube Music Charts calculation. Artists will now be ranked based on view counts from organic plays”.
The new policy also applies to official stat brags about how much a new video has been streamed in the first 24 hours after being posted. From now on, “videos eligible for YouTube’s 24-hour record debuts are those with the highest views from organic sources within the first 24 hours of the video’s public release”.
Clarifying, YouTube says “organic sources” include “direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features like the homepage, watch next and trending”, but not ad-based views.
But don’t worry all you past YouTube stat braggers with big ad budgets, “the changes will not impact YouTube’s existing 24-hour record debut holders”.
