Popularity of YouTube lies in users' own creative music videos

A new study has revealed that user's creativity made YouTube the world's biggest music service.

Study from Finland's Aalto University showed that alternative variations from popular artists' videos may reach an audience of millions.

Music is the most popular YouTube content by several measures, including video views and search activity. The world's first academic study on YouTube music consumption by Aalto University in Finland shows that one reason for its popularity lies in users' own video.

People re-use original music by popular artists to create their own alternative video variations, which may reach an audience of millions and can be found alongside any popular music title.

Dr of Technology Lassi A. Liikkanen from Aalto University, said that these variations that are called user-appropriated videos are readily available and well promoted on YouTube. This is what makes YouTube an interesting music service.

Lyrics and still videos, which only include music, rank highly in YouTube search results. A popular video, say a new Beyonce song, may share its audience collaterally with similar user-generated videos because they appear next to one another in the search results and suggested content. The researchers named this the halo effect.

In this study the researchers created a typology of YouTube music videos- traditional, user-appropriated, and derivative music videos.