Data Behind the 2013 YouTube Music Awards Nominees

November 01, 2013

The first-ever YouTube Music Awards are live this Sunday evening at 6pmET and to celebrate, we did a little digging into the data behind some of the 2013 nominees, all of which were selected based on a series of viewership, subscriber, and/or engagement metrics. (To get all the details on the nominees read this or check out the YouTube Spotlight channel where you can also vote for the winners.)

Video of the year is one of the categories drawing the most interest, and that's not really a surprise when you consider the 1.9 billion views these videos currently have combined. That's an average of over half a million views for every second of video.

Here is daily viewership data (though, please note that we have cut off the initial "Gentleman" spike, which at a record 38 million views in a single day made this chart hilariously unreadable):

The ten nominees for Artist of the Year drew nearly 10 billion views combined on their official videos between October 2012 and the start of this month. They also saw large numbers of new subscribers to those channels. And while many of the artists reside in the United States, when you look at likes, shares, and other types of fan activity, over 75% of the combined engagement top artists saw was from outside the U.S.

Here you can see their weekly growth in subscribers and the impact new video releases from Rihanna and PSY had on their channels:

While the data determined the nominees, the winners will be decided by fans whose sharing activity this week and last will be tallied right up to Sunday night's show.

For the expert trend trackers, see if you can guess what keyword this graph of YouTube search data represents... (hint: it's the top spiking "music"-related search of 2013)

Click to find the answer.

-- Kevin Allocca

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Top 5 Educational Blockbusters of the Summer

September 24, 2013

Summer's over, school is back, and students are in the classroom ready to learn again. But did they ever stop? Turns out, people on YouTube spent 15% more time watching educational videos in August 2013 than April. From outrageous science experiments and geographical anecdotes, to lessons on how to become British Royalty or stop an asteroid, people spent over 142 million hours watching educational content on YouTube this summer. That’s nearly 16,200 years of video watched, and more than twice as much as last summer!

And the numbers keep climbing. From 2011 to 2013, views of educational videos during the summer have increased by 99% in the US.

While the views come from a collection of over 46 million videos, we’ve put together a list of the summer’s educational blockbusters and highlighted the top five most-viewed EDU videos of the season. Sure beats summer school, right?

Video		Channel	Total Summer Views
	How Old Are Your Ears? (Hearing Test)	AsapSCIENCE	5,416,659
	Why Are Things Creepy?	Vsauce	4,560,119
	Self Freezing Coca-Cola	Grant Thompson	4,458,311
	Amazing Resonance Experiment!	brusspup	3,416,145
	Canada & The United States: Bizarre Borders	CGPGrey	3,277,612

*View counts based on totals as of August 31, 2013

Even if you’re back in class, it’s not too late to catch up on the summer’s hits. Check out our top five playlist, and good luck this year.

-- Dan Abel

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Batman wins YouTube: Our top 10 most popular superheroes

August 07, 2013

If YouTube popularity can determine who’ll win in the upcoming Batman vs. Superman movie, your views and uploads put Batman as the clear winner. Based on keyword searches, Batman is the most popular of all superheroes on YouTube, with more than 3 billion views of 71,000 hours of video. Following Batman is Thor, Superman, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Wolverine -- the rest of the list is below. Collectively, the top 10 superheroes alone account for more than 10 billion views and 234,000 hours of video.

Superhero(es)		Views	Hours of video
	Batman	3,000,000,000	71,000
	Thor	2,100,000,000	66,000
	Superman	1,700,000,000	14,000
	Iron Man	1,400,000000	20,000
	The Avengers	1,000,000,000	31,000
	Wolverine	540,000,000	7,800
	Spider Man	340,000,000	7,400
	Captain America	280,000,000	4,900
	Justice League	220,000,000	3,200
	Deadpool	200,000,000	8,900

While Batman also takes the top overall spot for searches, the Dark Knight has been overtaken in searches by Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers since 2008.

The top videos for each superhero are a mix of popular movie trailers, video game play, fan originals and more - check the playlist of the top 10 here:

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A year since Gangnam Style, K-Pop keeps getting bigger

July 15, 2013

On July 15, PSY's now legendary video for "Gangnam Style" will officially turn 1 year old. The video is already the most viewed video ever on YouTube and was the first clip ever to surpass 1 billion views -- it currently stands at 1.7B and is still growing for those counting. But impact of the biggest web video phenomenon of 2012 extends beyond PSY's singular music video.

While global interest in K-Pop has been on the rise for the past few years, the data suggests views of Korean artists tripled in the year following the release of Gangnam Style. Here's a chart of monthly views on top K-Pop channels, including PSY:

In the year before "Gangnam Style", official music videos from K-Pop artists were viewed over 2.2 billion times globally. The year following, that number jumped to over 7 billion views, 3x the viewership. In 2011, less than half the viewership on top K-Pop channels was from outside the Asia-Pacific region. Now, the majority of the watching is taking place outside the region. 91% of viewing in the past year was outside Korea.

In the U.S. where, for many, K-Pop had been an unknown genre of music, video viewership of top K-Pop artists doubled the year after "Gangnam Style" hit the web.

So what were people watching?

The top 10 music videos from Korea uploaded since "Gangnam Style" represent a diverse mix. PSY tops the list with his follow-up "Gentleman", which itself now has nearly half of a billion views. Other major acts include Girls Generation and Big Bang, both of which have cultivated large international followings.

You can see the full top 10 via this playlist or watch below:

-- Kevin Allocca

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Introducing the YouTube Trends Map

May 07, 2013

Are teens in the South watching the same videos as middle-aged folks in New England? Now with the YouTube Trends Map (youtube.com/trendsmap), you can see today’s most popular videos in major markets across the U.S. You can also see what’s popular with women or men, as well as by different age groups.

The Trends Map is the result of all the great feedback you’ve given us from the Trends Dashboard, as we keep working to help you find great videos and channels on YouTube. For now, the Trends Map is only available for the U.S., but stay tuned for updates.

Check out the Trends Map FAQ for any questions, and happy trend-tracking!

-- Kevin Allocca

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PSY's 'Gentleman' Raises the Bar

April 22, 2013

Everyone knew the followup to PSY's massive (if unlikely) international hit "Gangnam Style" would draw lots of attention. But considering the assumption-defying nature of PSY's breakout popularity and massive anticipation, it was hard to predict just how big that spike in interest would be. One week and around 200 million views later, the results are in.

PSY already holds the record for the most viewed video of all time -- Gangnam Style now has an incredible 1.5 billion views -- but now he also set the record for the most views ever in a single day with the over 38 million "Gentleman" achieved on April 14th. Here's a chart of the incredible daily viewership so far:

Not surprisingly, PSY's new single quickly became April's top rising search on YouTube -- with worldwide interest first peaking on Monday April 15 and remaining high since -- and debuted at #1 on YouTube's music chart, bumping his previous hit to #2.

From a stats perspective, it's one of the biggest music video launches the web has ever seen. For some added perspective, "Gentleman" was seen 100 million times in less than 4 days in regions all over the world, a milestone that it took "Gangnam Style" nearly two months to achieve:

The previous single-day record was set by KONY 2012 last March.

-- Kevin Allocca

Note: 24-hour period measured via PST.

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Rise of the Ridiculous Prank Channel

April 01, 2013

Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

Pranking and prank videos have been a part of online video culture from the start. For YouTube, the popularity of some classic videos -- Rickroll anyone? -- was entirely based around prank behavior. Jimmy Kimmel helped bring crowd-sourced video pranking to the masses and fads like coning spread from one country to the next.

But over the past few years, we've also started to see another trend emerging: prank channels. Entire channels devoted to terrorizing and harassing innocent people. Here's a chart of the monthly viewcount for just the top 10 of these channels.

So what are the top 10? By our rough estimation, we'd designate these 10 channels -- whose videos have been watched around 3.5 billion times combined -- as the heaviest producers of consistent popular prank videos:

Want more? Check out this playlist for a selection of 10 of the top trending prank videos of all time. Watch them all below or click here to see the list.

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YouTube Searches Now on Google Trends

March 20, 2013

Here's a trivia question: Based on YouTube searches, what was the top trending animal on YouTube this month in the United States? It's not what you might think...

Yes, goats. (If you missed this one and want to know more about how exactly screaming goats became so popular this month, here's one video that discusses the whole phenomenon.)

Google Trends enables you to take popular search queries and explore traffic patterns over time and geography. Now we've added YouTube search data going back to 2008, making it another great tool to look at video trends. Visit Google Trends and enter any search you'd like and then, on the left, choose "limit to" for YouTube. You can slice by region or category as well.

Search query interest can often provide a more detailed picture into the life of a trend or topic. For example: for those of you wondering whether the "Harlem Shake" is over... it's not.

You can also see interesting seasonal patterns. For example, cooking searches for "turkey" in the US see dramatic spikes every November as people scramble to remember exactly how to prep that big meal before the relatives arrive.

And Rebecca Black searches spike once each week. Guess which day...

Head over to Google Trends and see what other interesting YouTube searches you can find.

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The Harlem Shake Has Exploded (Updated)

February 12, 2013

Depending on your frame of reference, the "Harlem Shake" is best known as dance move from the 1980s, a dance track by Baauer, or the biggest web video trend of the month. If you need to get caught up to speed, here's a playlist of some of the most-popular iterations of it from the past few days.

The meme first started gaining traction last week and is attributed to a silly video from a vlogger named "Filthy Frank." Though it was another user named SunnyCoastSkate who then established the form we've become familiar with: the jump cut, the helmet, etc.

From there, the spin-offs spread very quickly. As of the 11th, around 12,000 "Harlem Shake" videos had been posted since the start of the month and they'd already been watched upwards of 44 million times. As you can see in the chart below, over 4,000 of these videos are being uploaded per day and that number is still likely on the rise.

One of the unique directions the trend took rather early was spawned by the staff of Maker Studios, who created what's currently the currently most-viewed version from their office. While it could have just remained a college-kid fad, Maker's version helped signal that the trend was something any organization or office could be a part of, with other companies joining them like...

College Humor	The Chive

Break	Buzzfeed

Musicians Matt and Kim produced a pretty epic one that's been circulated widely on social media. It's been performed by the young... and the old.

Some of the many subgroups we've seen are swim teams and U.S. service academies, and there are plenty more on the way, we're sure.

Update (2/15): It turns out plenty more were on the way. As of Valentine's day the number of "Harlem Shake" videos has increased to around 40,000 -- based on video title -- and those videos now have 175 million views. Here's an update to the above chart:

-- Kevin Allocca

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Best of 2012: Top Lists of Trending and Popular Videos

January 04, 2013

As we officially start a new year of trending videos in 2013, let's take a look back at the most-popular and top trending videos across a wide variety of interesting YouTube video categories that helped make 2012 the year that it was!

(Click through to view playlists)


Top 10 Trending Science Videos of 2012	Top Trending Sports Videos of 2012	Top 10 How-to and DIY Videos of 2012

Top 10 Eye-Popping Videos of 2012	Top 10 Cover Videos of 2012	Top 10 Awe-Inspiring Videos of 2012

Top Trending Beauty Videos of 2012	Top Trending Comedy Videos of 2012	Top 10 Pet Videos of 2012

Top 10 Political Videos of 2012	Top 10 Gaming Culture Videos of 2012	Top 10 Holiday Videos of 2012

And, in case you missed it, here's our recap of the top overall trending videos of the year.

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