40% of YouTube’s Audience Watch Music Videos

Beginning today comScore will be reporting data on YouTube partner channels. They apparently released some early information to Ad Age who revealed that music videos are a big draw and both Vevo and Warner Music are running that vid game.

Ad Age's Edmund Lee reports that, according to comScore, 40% of YouTube's audience watched music videos in July. However, that does not mean that 40% of the videos viewed were music videos, only that those viewers included music videos in the categories they viewed. Of the top two channels, 38% of YouTube viewers watched videos from Vevo while 20% saw Warner Music videos.

The Ad Age article includes a list of over 50 YouTube channels with unique views, number of videos viewed per user and minutes of viewing per video. However, not all partners are participating in the program. Hopefully comScore will be releasing additional public information as part of YouTube Partner Reporting but it's more likely they'll be reserving deeper dives for paid customers.

But if one considers that Ad Age's brief mention of music videos does not include phenomena ranging from people dancing in their living rooms to professional dance footage to trailers for movies and games, the amount of music being heard is an even greater aspect of the YouTube viewing experience than indicated by traffic to individual channels and to music videos as a genre.

Though some in the music industry feel that only music for which one pays represents humans valuing music, a more obvious conclusion is that music is a deeply integral part of daily life on the web, just as it is offline. There are obviously a variety of difficulties with business models but anyone working from the assumption that people don't value music has already handicapped their potential for moving forward in a productive manner.

That said, you can find out more about the YouTube Partner Program and their mostly secret requirements for partnership if you're interested in getting in on that game.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. He is currently relaunching Flux Research to pursue his long-standing obsession with web business models. To suggest music services and related topics for review at Hypebot, please contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.