YouTube Changes How It Counts Views for Record-Breaking Music Videos

Online video giant YouTube is introducing a major change to its music chart system after discovering that artists and labels were using growth hacks to inflate how many people were watching their videos. YouTube is no longer counting "advertising views" when it comes to the company calculating its music charts. Instead, ranking for top-watched music videos will be based on organic plays, The Verge quoted a new blog-post as saying on Friday.

"In an effort to provide more transparency to the industry and align with the policies of official charting companies such as Billboard and Nielsen, we are no longer counting paid advertising views on YouTube in the YouTube Music Charts calculation. Artists will now be ranked based on view counts from organic plays," the company wrote in a blog-post.

It is changing its methodology for reporting on 24-hour record debuts to also only count views from organic sources, including direct links to the video, search results.

"Videos eligible for YouTube's 24-hour record debuts are those with the highest views from organic sources within the first 24 hours of the video's public release. This includes direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features like the homepage, watch next and Trending," the blog-post added.

Recently, Indian rapper Badshah seemed to break YouTube's one-day record in July, gaining more than 75 million views with his hit "Paagal", beating out BTS with 75 million views to their 74.6 million. It is suspected that the rapper's total view was inflated.