Big Data Picks This Year's YouTube Music Awards Honorees

We seem to be awash in awards shows these days, and most of them feel like they're packaged especially for TV viewing rather than to honor the nominees (as evidenced by the recent iHeartRadio awards). In fact, many times the winners and performers are picked by anonymous "voters" who just happen to select the acts that are the most popular at the moment and also have the largest potential viewer attraction.

The YouTube Music Awards may be another me-too award, but at least it's selecting its winners in a more modern way - by letting the data do the talking.

The awards event will recognize the site's 50 biggest artists based on the views, subscribers and engagement over the last 6 months on Youtube, which is a pretty good general indicator of popularity.

Among the 50 honorees include artists that you'd probably expect like Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, One Direction, Ariana Grande, Beyonce, Hozier, Ed Sheeran, and Brad Paisley, but there's also some off-the-radar choices as well like Pentatonix and Lindsey Stirling, artists that are a product almost exclusively of YouTube.

That said, the 50 award honorees represent the cream of the music crop on the service, collectively garnering over 47 billion views (yes, that's with a "b") so far.

One thing that's going to be a lot different about this year's awards is that it won't consist of what we've come to know as a "show." Even though last year's awards show was anything but traditional in that it was largely one big improvisation (although it was eventually viewed more than 54 million times), this year the network has decided to forgo any vestige of the standard fare we've come to expect from such an event.

Instead, on March 23rd YouTube will receive a one day music makeover, complete with a number of exclusive videos produced by Vice Media. In the meantime, YouTube also has launched a channel just for the awards.

As with the previous YouTube Music Awards, the event is sponsored by Kia.

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15 Under-Appreciated Events That Affected The Music Business In 2013

We’re coming to the end of 2013, so now is a good time to look back at the music business happenings of the year to see the trends and events that affected it. The following 15 events may have been taken lightly at the time, but at least some of them will have a lasting effect on the industry.

The events are broken into three major areas: music distribution, artists and record labels, which all include tech and marketing related events to some degree. Here we go, in no particular order of importance.

Music Distribution

1. Spotify sets its mobile service partially free and expands into 55 countries, then licenses the Led Zeppelin catalog to help with the promotion. Time to get all the market share possible before the deep pocket competitors like Apple and Google hone in on the sector. 

2. Crying poverty despite 72 million monthly active users, Pandora tries to lower its licensing royalties by buying a terrestrial radio station. Royalty collection organizations, artists and songwriters decry the move as suits fly back and forth. Bottom line, Pandora still loses money.

3. iTunes Radio is unveiled amid much fanfare in September, reaches 20 million users in a month, then disappears from the public consciousness. Is the service a sleeping giant or just sleepy?

4. Beats Music and YouTube Music both postponed their launches until 2014. The streaming music services competition is stiff; they have to get it right out of the gate.

5. Twitter’s #Music lies dormant after few adoptions, which proves the point - just because you have a large user base doesn’t necessarily mean that users want to get their music from you.

6. Pirating decreases as users find that streaming is more convenient and efficient. Pirates are also found to be some of the most prolific music consumers, so is the decrease good or bad?

7. The first YouTube Music Awards show proves that it’s what seems like a good idea isn’t always so, as it draws shockingly few viewers. You can be the largest online music portal, but that doesn’t mean that users want to watch your event. Read more on Forbes.

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You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The YouTube Music Awards Misses It’s Chance

As you may have read in my previous musings on the subject, the YouTube Music Awards (or the YTMA’s as it’s now being called) seemed like an ideal event to represent the best of the new music business. Or should have been. Here’s what we got during Sunday night’s extravaganza instead.

1. A show that was poorly viewed. The show was viewed by only 220,000 viewers at its peak, which is embarrassing for a platform the size of YouTube. The fact is that most of the performers alone could have done better numbers without the network’s help, which means that YouTube did a woeful job getting the word out.

Now think about that for a second - YouTube, which is the most powerful platform for discovering new music online, and which is owned by Google, arguably the most powerful of all Internet companies, could only generate 220,000 viewers! Even 10 times that amount would have been embarrassing. Just for comparison, the MTV VMA’s had a viewership of 10.1 million this year.

The interesting thing was that the YouTube Music Awards got a lot of coverage from the mainstream press, which clearly didn’t address the market that the show was aimed at. Shouldn’t a company so steeped in modern mass communication know better?

That said, the show did have a fair amount of social action, with over 300,000 tweets over the three hours before during and after the show. The problem here is that the tweet dropped off drastically when the show went live, which could have been from the fact that most viewers were watching on a phone or tablet, and it’s difficult to tweet and watch at the same time when you only have one screen. Read more on Forbes.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter and Facebook for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

It's Time For The YouTube Music Awards

There's been much hoopla over this year's Video Music Awards (VMA's), with everything about who won, who didn't win, the fights, the pouting, and finally, the low ratings. The fact of the matter is that the VMA's have long been obsolete, but sadly out of touch as well.

MTV, who sponsors the VMAs, is now a lifestyle channel and rarely plays videos any more. How can it have any award credibility if it's not in the game. That's assuming, of course, that it had any in the first place.

But here's the most damning indictment; some of the biggest videos that have been nominated in this past year (Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" and Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe") have been a product of viral videos on YouTube. In fact, many studies point to the fact that YouTube is one of the main avenues of discovery for new music. When was the last time MTV could claim that? 1989?

That's why it's time for an music video awards show that's far more relevant to what's happening today - the YouTube Music Awards. Google, who owns YouTube, is already building broadcast facilities and gradually dipping their toe into television, and this would be the perfect way to start it off.

Just image how they could tie it all together. Do a live stream on YouTube Live and GoogleTV in conjunction with a TV network, and tie in the social with a massive Google+ Hangout. In fact, I volunteer my services as exec producer, if you're listening Google, because the YouTube Music Awards is an idea who's time has come.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.