Why YouTube will fail at being a mainstream broadcaster

Spotted an item in Ad age which examined the rather disappointing stats on this past weekends YouTube Music Awards. They noted

Official viewership numbers weren't immediately available on Monday morning, but the livestream's watch page counts 873,288 views. That's a far cry from the 60 million people said to have voted on the awards or the 10.1 million views on the months-old clip announcing the show.

Ad Age counted only 217,244 concurrent viewers thirty-one minutes into the awards show, which seemed on the high end for the nearly 90-minute show. Minutes later during a promotional spot for show sponsor Kia featuring YouTube star Taryn Southern, the figure dropped to roughly 211,000 viewers and later fluctuated from 170,000 to 190,000.

Modest numbers for a site that averages more than 1 billion monthly unique visitors each month. MTV's Video Music Awards, the most direct cable-TV comparison, drew more than 10 million viewers in August.

I wonder why they went to the trouble of making rather poor special effects, when the original videos on the web are so much better. Compare YouTube's live version of violinist Lindsey Stirling with one she posted on Vimeo two years ago.

Conclusion: Youtube needs to be more than just broadcast on the web. It doesn't yet know how to create a conversation or play with second screen. Comments were disabled - so the audience was simply passive. How very 1980's




Spontaneous Me Lindsey Stirling from Psycho-Human on Vimeo.