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Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - North America

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Resurgence of the Music Video

June 16, 2006

A short post on John Battelle's blog caught my eye this morning. The post linked to a report that the RIAA was considering taking action against Youtube and Google Video for the unauthorized use of copyrighted music in amateur music videos uploaded to the services.

Below is a chart that demonstrates that, based on search data, there is a resurgence in music video interest, and that queries to find music videos have surpassed one of the most common search queries on the web, "music downloads."

videos versus downloads.png

Interestingly, the bulk of traffic on these search terms are terminating at sites with legal rights to stream content (YouTube doesn't appear in the top ten sites receiving traffic on the query "music videos"). However, given LeeAnn's previous post on the subject, it's also evident that viral, amateur music videos are partly responsible for the impressive growth of YouTube.

Note: The spike in searches for "music downloads" during the holiday season is most likely due to post iPod gift activity.

Posted by Bill Tancer at 12:22 PM | (0) | (0)