Major record labels such as Universal, Sony/BMG, and RCA, were stripped by YouTube of over two billion views in the past month. Universal was hit the hardest, losing one billion views in the raid, and artists such as Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Beyonce, and Avril Lavigne were all stripped of over 100 million phony views, violating YouTube's terms of service regarding view manipulation. In addition, videos from over 500 prominent channels were also stripped of views.
According to The Daily Dot, Google underwent a massive cleanup last week, retracting billions of views believed to be falsified by "black hat" view count-building techniques used by third-party companies to inflate the view tallies as a means to manipulate a video's popularity and its increase exposure on YouTube.
The biggest offender of the big three record companies was Universal Music Group, who was stripped of over a billion views on its own, from its previous total of over 7 billion. Sony/BMG and RCA lost 850 million and 159 million views, respectively.
However, it seems as though artists associated with VEVO, which is owned by co-owned Sony, Universal, and Abu Dhabi Media, lost no views in the crackdown. According to YouTube statistical aggregator Socialblade, VEVO affiliated artists like Eminem, Rihanna, and Justin Bieber, were all not guilty of having fake views.
No comments:
Post a Comment