YOUTUBE

Youtube has become the main source of music videos for our generation and the 21st century. It allows us to view videos in seconds free of charge. We can even log in and save our favourites and make playlists. It was formed in February 2005 by three former Paypal employees. It was said that the inspiration for YouTube came from Janet Jackson's performance in the 2004 Super Bowl when her breast was exposed during her performance. People could not easily find a clip of this online which led to the idea of a website on which people could share videos and allow the world to see current affairs first hand. Since they allowed anyone to post videos on the site its popularity grew. Music businesses saw this as an opportunity to have their own 'channels' that were official to market their artists songs. These kinds of channels are featured on the sites and are easier to find as opposed to individual users channels, to keep the industries on top. However, it has allowed people to rise to fame with videos that have been watched over and over. An example of this is the video filmed by a father of his two sons. Charlie bites the other son and his reaction was filmed and uploaded to Youtube. This seemed to spark an interest in the public as soon it had thousands of views.

 
An example of an artist who rose to fame via Youtube is Justin Beiber, His early videos were viewed by thousands until Usher decided to take him under his wing. The views then grew to millions. His song Baby got 913,491,165 views on the site. 

Youtube has remained successful due to the amount of content it has. It has something for everyone and displays niche broadcasting but in the same place. There are channels for each artists and the ability to customise it to your own personal preferences which suits every user. The ability to search also makes it appeal to audiences. As opposed to music channels which just play songs at you, Youtube allows people the freedom to search and select. This may be a cause of the lesser demand for the music video as people like to access what they want, fast. Therefore, music channels are being left behind for a faster version of the songs. Youtube cuts out TV adverts. A lot of the time the videos including the songs may not be official and just feature lyrics created by one user as they have no adverts, unlike official videos. Live performances are now seen as a novelty, therefore, there is not a decline in the popularity of them. However, there is a decline in the frequency as performances are now elaborate and expensive due to production costs, travel costs and the costs of paying artists to perform. Years ago this was not the case. 

This the top ten viewed videos of all time, taken from Wikipedia. I have checked again other websites that this is truthful-

Rank	Video name	Artist	Number of views (as of 15 Oct 2013)	Uploaded on
1.	"Gangnam Style"	PSY	1,793,660,941	15 July 2012
2.	"Baby"	Justin Bieber featuring Ludacris	913,017,758	19 Feb 2010
3.	"On the Floor"	Jennifer Lopez featuring Pitbull	698,004,418	3 March 2011
4.	"Love the Way You Lie"	Eminem featuring Rihanna	606,858,681	5 Aug 2010
5.	"Party Rock Anthem"	LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett & GoonRock	579,799,634	8 March 2011
6.	"Charlie Bit My Finger – Again!"	Harry and Charlie Davies-Carr	577,403,824	22 May 2007
7.	"Gentleman"	PSY	564,104,660	13 Apr 2013
8.	"Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)"	Shakira featuring Freshlyground	560,630,017	4 June 2010
9.	"Bad Romance"	Lady Gaga	540,357,181	23 Nov 2009
10.	"Ai Se Eu Te Pego"	Michel Teló	529,242,148	25 Jul 2011

Strikingly, all of these videos are recent and released in the past 4 years. Excluding the sequal to 'Charlie bit my finger'. This shows a demand for songs that are in the charts and that pop industries seem to carry on to rule the industry as a whole. Not one metal or pop punk song features on this list, even though they get thousands of views. The mainstream channels such as MTV and Starz Music seem to air these more popular songs as they reach the top of the charts. There is little room for other genres as they hardly ever reach the top ten. Arctic Monkeys often beat this with the appearance of the Indie genre in the charts. 'Do I wanna know?' is a recent hit of theirs from their new album 'AM'. It hit number 11 in the UK Singles Chart. Some songs from massively famous bands do reach the charts but not as often as pop artists. Artists such as Slipknot never feature in the UK singles chart. However, they appear in other charts featured on more niche channels such as Scuzz.

These figures support the success of Youtube as it conveys which songs and artists feature in the chart. The higher the song in the chart and how long they feature, they more Youtube views they get. This leaves little room for bands such as Slipknot and even Arctic Monkeys in the charts. The cycle and relation between the most popular and heard of UK charts and Youtube means that there will be little change in the future.