YouTube No Longer Counting Paid Advertising Views with Music Charts Calculation after Controversy

YouTube is revisiting how it measures its music charts. These changes are coming after Bollywood superstar “Paagal” set a new record with views. Furthermore, the views were part of the YouTube Music Charts and 24-hour viewership records. YouTube will no longer be counting paid advertising views towards these counts.

The news was first reported in a blog post from YouTube. The post highlights many of the changes and the importance of YouTube for measuring views for artists. Noting everything from “American Bandstand” to “TRL”, YouTube is the medium for music videos of our generation.

YouTube Music Charts have become an indispensable source for the industry and the most accurate place for measuring the popularity of music listening behavior happening on the world’s largest music platform. In an effort to provide more transparency to the industry and align with the policies of official charting companies such as Billboard and Nielsen, we are no longer counting paid advertising views on YouTube in the YouTube Music Charts calculation. Artists will now be ranked based on view counts from organic plays.

Notably in under 24 hours, the music video posted by “Paagal” received over 75 million streams. With such high numbers, YouTube intentionally didn’t credit the artist who is signed by Sony Music. Bloomberg later reported that the video gained assistance from bots to garner fake views. Following this news, it also became apparent that ads were purchased from Google and YouTube that embedded the video and directed fans to it in another way.

With the new practices set in place, we will have to see how the charts change. Buying ads and streams is not an uncommon practice whatsoever.