Many young Americans watch the latest music videos on YouTube, not MTV. And YouTube has rolled out a new feature a la “Video Countdown” that lists the top 100 music videos of the week. Calculated by song traffic spanning the official music videos, user-uploaded videos and “viral debuts,” YouTube says the charts are a holistic look into a music video’s popularity.
“It’s as populist as the MTV of yore,” writes Adrian Covert in Gizmodo about the new YouTube feature, which also allows you to watch all the clips in sequence. “Our clicks determine what hits the top of the list. It will make music videos relevant again, which they haven’t been for quite some time.”
Which explains, for example, why Rebecca Black made the top 10 list.
Of course, MTV realized the shift long ago, migrating its programming from linear music videos to appointment TV shows. And MTV.com also lists the top music videos in a variety of categories from most viewed to most shared. But the sheer scale of YouTube is impressive. For example, Katy Perry’s California Gurls has 2.3 million views on MTV.com and 15.4 million views on YouTube. (Not counting the other version of the same song on YouTube — one has 25 million views!)
Meanwhile, MTV has far from lost its relevance. It recently hit 21 million Facebook fans, far and away the biggest TV brand on Facebook. In a new social media world, that’s not a bad place to be.