YouTube Strips Billions Of Fake Views From Music Industry Channels

YouTube has stripped billions of fake views from the channels of several of the world's largest music industry companies.  The views were reportedly purchased from companies that use automated programs to artificially inflate the counts.

Google slashed the cumulative view counts on YouTube channels belonging to Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG, and RCA Records by more than 2 billion views Tuesday, a drastic winter cleanup that may be aimed at shutting down black hat view count-building techniques employed by a community of rogue view count manipulators on the video-sharing site.  Universal's channel is the one that took the biggest hit. According to figures compiled by the YouTube statistics analysts at SocialBlade, the record company's YouTube channel lost more than 1 billion views from its preexisting tally of 7 billion views Tuesday. Sony/BMG was the second largest sufferer, dropping more than 850 million views in one day, bringing its total number of views to a mere 2.3 million. RCA, which got off scot free by comparison, dipped 159 million views. Its tally now sits more modestly at 120 million views.

RELATED: Last week the video for Gangnam Style broke YouTube's all-time record with over one billion views.  The view count for that clip does not appear to have been affected by YouTube's action.