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by nostromo 4991 days ago
The channels follow a power law. I got the number of views from here (http://socialblade.com/youtube/top/5000) and plotted them: http://i.imgur.com/X6nEL.png

If the $23k average for the top 1k is correct, then only the top 250 or so actually make $23k a month or more. At that line are some pretty big channels, like Husky Starcraft and big bands like Kesha and Muse. In which case, this doesn't seem like a lot of money.
3 comments
ChuckMcM 4991 days ago
That is an awesome plot. That combined with a combined with a tenancy plot to determine what sort of churn there is in the top 500 and its mix would really illustrate what sort of 'opportunity' YouTube is.
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majani 4991 days ago
Note that syndication is very popular with the top channels, so you have top creators like RWJ owning 3 of the top 1000 channels, VEVO owning more than 50, same with machinima.com, Demand Media and others which I might have missed.

That skews the power law even further.

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rorrr 4991 days ago
I charted the LOG(video views) here:

http://i.imgur.com/WubeX.png

What's really interesting is that LOG(LOG(video views)) looks pretty much the same:

http://i.imgur.com/NnSrA.png

So I'm not sure what law the distribution follows, but the top players get a TON more money than the rest. The top 211 players make more than the rest 4789.

EDIT:

It also means that the top player universalmusicgroup makes $485,707/month, and the 1000th player playboy makes only $7,880/month (assuming payouts are proportional to the views, which isn't perfectly correct)

Here's the table:

      universalmusicgroup    $485,707
      machinima              $261,804
      JustinBieberVEVO       $206,638
      RihannaVEVO            $198,898
      expertvillage          $182,052
      LadyGagaVEVO           $160,885
      AtlanticVideos         $147,373
      EminemVEVO             $145,593
      RayWilliamJohnson      $141,569
      IGNentertainment       $139,634
      failblog               $134,727
      UltraRecords           $134,724
      muyap                  $126,330
      smosh                  $124,425
      shakiraVEVO            $122,633
      hollywoodrecords       $121,395
      FueledByRamen          $113,681
      beyonceVEVO            $109,576
      barelypolitical        $104,784
      collegehumor           $103,772
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