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Simultaneous MLT YouTube Views
In a recent “Ask MLT” thread titled “When you do live shows again”, the question came up as to how many people worldwide are watching a given MLT video on YouTube at the same time. I figured out a way to estimate that number based on the length of the video, the age of the video, and the total number of views. There are some caveats, most significantly that it’s an average over the entire history of the video rather than the number at any given moment. You can check out the aforementioned thread for details.
Ten days ago I tabulated the top ten MLT videos with regard to the number of simultaneous views (S). Here’s how it turned out:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipeout: S = 16.7
2) Both Sides Now: S = 16.2
3) Wish You Were Here: S = 13.0
4) Nowhere Man: S = 8.7
5) You Can’t Do That: S = 5.8
6) Lola: S = 4.7
7) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: S = 4.3
8) Sunshine Superman: S = 4.2
9) I’m a Believer: S = 4.0
10) Till There Was You: S = 3.2And here’s how that list stands today, with the change in S given in parentheses after the updated value:
1) You Really Got Me: S = 19.2 (new)
2) Please Mr. Postman / Wipeout: S = 16.6 (-0.1)
3) Wish You Were Here: S = 12.9 (-0.1)
4) Both Sides Now: S = 12.1 (-4.1)
5) Nowhere Man: S = 8.2 (-0.5)
6) You Can’t Do That: S = 5.8 (0.0)
7) Lola: S = 4.7 (0.0)
8) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: S = 4.3 (0.0)
9) I’m a Believer: S = 3.9 (-0.1)
10) Sunshine Superman: S = 3.8 (-0.4)For a given video the number of simultaneous views is proportional to how many views it gets per day, so it’s expected that each S number will start out high during the discovery phase, drop off relatively quickly at first, and then gradually plateau over the long term. That seems to be the pattern we’re seeing here thus far. (The S number for YRGM is currently decreasing at about 0.1 per hour!) Longer videos have a leg up on shorter ones because the more time it takes to watch, the more viewers must be watching together in order to reach a certain number of views in a certain period of time.
The take-home lesson is that thanks to MLT, a lot of people are, as JP put it, “smiling for the same reason at precisely the same time”.
I plan to update this list about once a month, plus perhaps an occasional “news flash” when events warrant, until either I get bored with it or everyone tells me to stop.
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