• Major record labels stripped of more than two billion video views
• Biggest hit taken by Universal, which alone lost more than one billion
• 'This was an enforcement of our viewcount policy,' says YouTube
  

By Damien Gayle

PUBLISHED: 12:58 GMT, 28 December 2012 | DailyMail.co.uk

YouTube viewer figures are doubly valuable to channel owners since it is also the primary way in which the site works out how to share its advertising revenue with partners.

The Daily Dot reported how many of the channels affected - which also include ones belonging to Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Beyonce, among others - had also had many videos deleted. 

Universal, which previously had dozens of clips on its YouTube channel, has had its offering slashed to just five - none of which are music videos or last more than about a minute and a half.

Sony's page was also left practically bare following the cull, with just three videos left.

Among the channels affected was that of British X Factor success story Leona Lewis. The official YouTube channel of the protégé of music industry svengali Simon Cowell, lost nearly 24million page views as a result of the crackdown.

The mass takedowns came the same day that hundreds of the site's users flooded forums to complain they had suffered a series of video deletions for violations of YouTube's terms of service. 

Many speculated they fallen victim to a technical error, but YouTube replied to confirm that the users had been sanctioned for violating TOS item 4, Section H, which bans artificially inflating view counts.

According to the Daily Dot, the apparent crackdown last week was widely discussed on the Black Hat World forum, where visitors exchange advice on unethical search engine optimisation tactics.

In one thread on the forum, where YouTube included a link to the site's policy on 'viewcount gaming, the first post spoke of a 'friend' who 'sells likes' who had been told by four different customers that their videos were deleted due to violations of YouTube's terms of service.

The bigger they come: This graph shows how Universal Music Group lost more than a billion page views in a single day when YouTube carried out its audit on view numbers

This graph tracks the loss in views suffered by Sony BMG: The label behind such stars as Alicia Keys, Rita Ora and Labrinth lost more than 850million views in a single day

Record labels have blamed the cuts in their viewing figures on a change in the way that YouTube has changed its view count. Billboard reported how the Google-owned company recently decided to remove view counts for so-called 'dead videos', which were no longer live on the channel.

A senior label executive told the music industry trade magazine that since thousands of videos had in fact been migrated to Vevo, the views those clips accrued during their time on their dedicated label channels were taken away in YouTube's 'clean up'.

Universal acknowledged its drop in views, but told the Daily Dot its channel had been mostly dormant since it shifted its focus to Vevo, which it founded in 2009 together with Sony Music, Abu Dhabi Media Company, and E1 Entertainment.

Google declined to comment when contacted by MailOnline.

Commenters on the Sony YouTube channel gloated over the major record labels' apparent comeuppance.

User Lattentreffer posted on SonymusicSME: 'Pretty much f*** you, sonymusic.... Hahahaha.

'You got the axe on your black hat viewcount manipulating....!'
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2254181/YouTube-wipe...
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