The ubiquitous video streaming site and trampoline accident repository says they have caught major music labels Universal, Sony/BMG, and RCA inflating view numbers on their YouTube channels in a vain attempt to avoid irrelevance. In total, the music industry giants lost about 2 billion views that YouTube and their parents at Google decided were faked by for-hire view spoofing services.
Universal Music Group, the largest of the three offenders, lost more than one billion views on its YouTube channel once Google caught on to the shady practice and now has just a smidge under 6 billion total views. Although smaller, Sony/BMG apparently had the largest percentage of fake views: falling from over 850 million to only 2.3 million.
Meanwhile, over half of RCA's views were deemed to be faked and the record giant now sits at 120 million views. RCA artists Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera probably would have hit that number with a couple weeks on TRL back in 2000-2001.
Of course, the ever-helpful "views on YouTube" metric has been a measure of a video's virality since we (the Internet at large) decided comparing popular videos to contagious diseases was an apt metaphor. So it makes sense that the major record labels, which are little more than promotional machines at this point, would hold those numbers in high regard. Still, the crackdown on fake views also hit smaller channels belonging to Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, Beyoncé and others. Not to mention the scores of regular users who reportedly had their videos taken down for also hiring so-called "Black Hat" services to game the system — a clear violation of the YouTube terms of service.
We should definitely point out here that nearly 75% of Sony/BMG's remaining, validated views belong to none other than The Boss himself. Once again, Springsteen's authenticity prevails:
