Institutions: You Tube

These are just a few of the statistics YouTube has already published about their site ( https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html )

Momentum

·         YouTube has over a billion users–almost a third of all people on the Internet–and every day, people watch hundreds of millions of hours of YouTube videos and generate billions of views.

·         YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.

·         Growth in watch time on YouTube has accelerated and is up at least 50% year on year for three years straight.

·         The number of people watching YouTube each day has increased by 40% y/y since March 2014.

·         The number of users coming to YouTube who start at the YouTube homepage, similar to the way they might turn on their TV, has increased by more than 3x y/y.

Product

·         80% of YouTube's views are from outside of the U.S.

·         YouTube has launched local versions in more than 88 countries.

·         You can navigate YouTube in a total of 76 different languages (covering 95% of the Internet population).

Mobile

·         Once users are on YouTube, they are spending more time per session watching videos. On mobile, the average viewing session is now more than 40 minutes, that's an increase of more than 50% y/y.

·         The number of hours people spent watching videos on mobile has increased by 100% y/y.

·         More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.

Advertising

·         Partner revenue has increased by 50% y/y – and we've seen this level of partner revenue growth for three years running.

·         The number of channels earning six figures each year on YouTube has increased by 50% y/y.

·         All of the top 100 global brands have run TrueView ads over the past year, and 95% of TrueView advertisers have run campaigns across screens. We're also seeing strong growth in the number of new advertisers adopting TrueView, as the number of advertisers using TrueView grew by 45% in 2014.

Copyright

·         As of October 2014, YouTube has paid out $1 billion to rightsholders who have chosen to monetise claims since Content ID first launched in 2007.

·         As of July 2015, there are 8,000+ partners using Content ID–including many major network broadcasters, film studios and record labels–who have claimed over 400 million videos, helping them to control their content on YouTube and make money on videos containing copyrighted material.

·         We have more than 35 million active reference files in our Content ID database, making it the most comprehensive in the world. It’s even won a PrimeTime Emmy!

Investing in Creators

·         The YouTube Spaces team is focused on helping creators make great content through strategic programmes and workshops that are largely administered at the YouTube Space production facilities in Los Angeles, New York, London, Tokyo, Sao Paulo and Berlin.

·         As of March 2015, creators filming in YouTube Spaces have produced over 10,000 videos which have generated over 1 billion views and 70+ million hours of watch time.

From these statistics’ we can see how the creators of YouTube have built their site to have the most reach possible and allow a single a video to reach millions of people at a time. Releasing a music video on You Tube makes a lot of sense from the points made above as well as the fact that when a video reaches around 1 million views it becomes added to the front page of the website and becomes a recommended video for people to see. Music videos on YouTube do have a very high success rate with music videos like “Gangnam style” racking up 2.6 million views as of July 26. YouTube is a site with a huge TA as there is something on this site for everyone from hair tutorials to death metal meaning anyone can use it, launching a stars career on YouTube would be a good move  as there are billions of people on the site meaning the video would be seen at some point.

How this has influenced my planning
My research into the institution of YouTube has made me aware of a good way to launch a star's career as there as so many people that use the site meaning someone will see the video eventually as well as music channels on the site which feature new video's from new artist's.