Youtube revises policy for Music Charts, 24-hour debut, amidst rising criticism
Video-sharing platform Youtube announced key changes to its Music Charts as well as 24-hour debut policies on earlier this week. Previously, both had been criticized for getting influenced by paid advertisements and boosts on videos by well-to-do performers.
In its blog, the company said that the new changes were expected to introduce ‘more transparency to the industry’. Banishing redirected views from paid advertisements,Youtube has said that it would hereon only count organic views on videos in its music charts and 24-hour debut features.
Further clarifying, the blog post said “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. This includes direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features like the homepage, ‘Watch Next’ and ‘Trending’. Video advertising is an effective way to reach specific audiences with a song debut, but paid advertising views on YouTube will no longer be considered when looking at a 24-hour record debut. The changes will not impact YouTube’s existing 24-hour record debut holders.”
This shall also align with policies by official charting companies like Nielsen and Billboard who have also been eliminating paid views from their figures for quite some time.
Earlier this year, Indian rapper Badshah had become part of controversy, after his music video titled ‘Paagal’ reached 76 million views in one day breaking the South Korean boy-band BTS’ record. The rapper later admitted to having paid to boost the views on his video.
However, YouTube has only addressed the problem partially. In a comment to Rolling Stone magazine a Latin label source said, “There’s absolutely no difference. At the end of the day, YouTube might not recognize [the view count], but the artist is still going to go to the public like, ‘Hey, look at this!’ It’s the same thing.”
Thus to fully prove the credibility it seeks to establish as well as the diversity it wrote in its blog, it desires to encourage, YouTube has still to bring more changes. This would include changing how it calculates views on every single video as well.
