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Simultaneous MLT YouTube Views
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I thought it might be fun to make a graph of how the number of YouTube views of various stalwart MLT videos varies over time. I chose the ten most frequently viewed videos of 2022, and plotted the average number of daily views for each month of that year (1 = January, 2 = February, etc.)
Sorry for the poor quality of the photo. (I had to point my laptop camera at my desktop monitor!) But metaphorically the picture is clear: Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out (the top line) dominates every month! Beyond that, there appears to be a bit of seasonal variation in the number of views of most videos: high in March/April, low in October/November.
The other videos plotted are Drive My Car, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, When I’m Sixty-Four, You Can’t Do That, If I Fell, I’m Looking Through You, Wish You Were Here, I Saw Her Standing There, and Nowhere Man.
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Hi David, That’s interesting. I wonder why the lack of views in October and November? Any theories? I only found their videos and music in October 2022 and watched them almost constantly in November and December and have been watching them a lot ever since. Even though I have all of their music on CDs I only listen to them in my car. I usually listen to YouTube playlists at home almost constantly. I play either playlists on the Twins channel or the MLT playlist I made that currently has 84 songs. I’m sure it wasn’t me that was slacking. Lol. Anyway, thanks for posting all of these stats. I’m kind of a stats nerd too so I know the amount of time and work it takes.
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Hey, Tim. Good question! But like a good scientist I’ll probably make a similar chart a year from now and see if the seasonality emerges in the same way again before I think too hard about the reason. I don’t really have anything even speculatively right now. The viewing rates should be constantly increasing!
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A few more daily updates on Any Other Day:
For Feb. 27th, V = 1651 and C = 3.15. For Feb. 28th, V = 1392 and C = 2.66. For Mar. 1st, V = 975 and C = 1.86. For Mar. 2nd, V = 858 and C = 1.64. And for Mar. 3rd, V = 828 and C = 1.58.
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Averaged over the past week, Any Other Day is at V = 834 and C = 1.59, essentially right where it was a week ago.
For the last hour of March 10th, Vinyl Announcement! is at V = 5712 and C = 19.3. (I’m sure this one isn’t expected to have a long shelf life!)
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Here are some daily figures for Vinyl Announcement! over the past week:
For March 11th, V = 2878 and C = 9.72. For March 12th, V = 1134 and C = 3.83. For March 13th, V = 740 and C = 2.50. For March 14th, V = 570 and C = 1.93. For March 15th, V = 442 and C = 1.49. For March 16th, V = 419 and C = 1.42. And for March 17th, V = 269 and C = 0.91.
Meanwhile, the average numbers for Any Other Day over the past week are V = 606 and C = 1.16.
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Here’s another week of daily data for Vinyl Announcement!:
For March 18th, V = 251 and C = 0.85. For March 19th, V = 193 and C = 0.65. For March 20th, V = 170 and C = 0.57. For March 21st, V = 154 and C = 0.52. For March 22nd, V = 129 and C = 0.44. For March 23rd, V = 129 and C = 0.44. And for March 24th, V = 146 and C = 0.49.
And another data point for Any Other Day: averaged over the past week, V = 515 and C = 0.98.
Addendum: here are the initial numbers for Tell Me Why, taken over the last hour of March 26th: V = 14832 and C = 26.8. More daily updates on this one at the end of the week, along with the monthly report for March.
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Here are some daily data for Tell Me Why:
For March 27th, V = 22936 and C = 41.4. For March 28th, V = 13671 and C = 24.7. For March 29th, V = 7037 and C = 12.7. For March 30th, V = 6582 and C = 11.9. And for March 31st, V = 6524 and C = 11.8.
Meanwhile, for the past week, Any Other Day is at V = 516 and C = 0.99, and Vinyl Announcement! is at V = 140 and C = 0.47.
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Time for the March report! All these numbers cover the period from March 2nd through March 31st, except for Any Other Day, which is for just the last week. Tell Me Why is excluded because it’s still evolving quickly, but some recent data for it are given in the previous post in this thread.
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simultaneous views:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: C = 12.11 (+2.05)
2) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: C = 3.08 (+0.18)
3) Here Comes the Sun: C = 2.90 (+0.74)
4) Drive My Car (2012): C = 2.26 (+0.21)
5) When I’m Sixty-Four: C = 1.85 (+0.05)
6) I Saw Her Standing There: C = 1.76 (+0.04)
7) You Can’t Do That: C = 1.76 (+0.06)
8) If I Fell: C = 1.66 (0.00)
9) Nowhere Man: C = 1.62 (+0.25)
10) If You Raise Your Head: C = 1.47 (-0.61)
11) Day Tripper: C = 1.46 (-0.03)
12) Wish You Were Here: C = 1.45 (-0.07)
13) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): C = 1.32 (-0.27)
14) This Boy: C = 1.24 (-0.06)
15) Reacting to Our First Music Videos: C = 1.20 (-0.23)
16) Africa: C = 1.19 (-0.05)
17) Vincent: C = 1.19 (+0.03)
18) Lola: C = 1.11 (+0.10)
19) Till There Was You: C = 1.11 (+0.14)
20) Any Other Day: C = 0.99 (-0.87)
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views per day:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: V = 4272 (+724)
2) Here Comes the Sun: V = 1194 (+307)
3) Drive My Car (2012): V = 1167 (+109)
4) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: V = 970 (+54)
5) When I’m Sixty-Four: V = 916 (+26)
6) You Can’t Do That: V = 808 (+28)
7) If I Fell: V = 752 (+1)
8) I Saw Her Standing There: V = 749 (+19)
9) Nowhere Man: V = 721 (+113)
10) Day Tripper: V = 636 (-13)
11) Till There Was You: V = 583 (+72)
12) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): V = 543 (-112)
13) Please Please Me: V = 542 (+37)
14) This Boy: V = 527 (-28)
15) Any Other Day: V = 516 (-459)
16) If You Raise Your Head: V = 488 (-204)
17) I’m Looking Through You: V = 441 (+27)
18) Wish You Were Here: V = 428 (-21)
19) In My Life: V = 421 (+48)
20) Vincent: V = 402 (+9)
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A lot more increases than decreases this month, which is great to see! And the latest MLT originals are still hanging in there. There was a huge uptick percentagewise for Here Comes the Sun, which perhaps makes sense at this time of year in the northern hemisphere.
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Very cool David, I feel dumb asking but what does the C stand for? Comments? One thing that made me smile is The Beatles songs hold 9 of the top 10 spots. They are still very popular band.
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Sorry, Tim, there’s sort of a history there that I should probably explain.
This thread started a couple of years ago when someone wondered how many people are watching any given MLT video at any given moment. I came up with a way to estimate that based on the total number of views, and I called it S for “simultaneous views”.
Later I realized it would be more meaningful to base that stat on just fairly recent views rather than the entire history, so I redid the calculations that way and named the new number C for “current simultaneous views”, so as not to confuse it with the old way of doing it.
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I see David, so Current simultaneous views would be within the last month or so? There must be a way we can help boost The Twins views on YouTube. I see other independents that don’t seem near as talented or work near as hard that are getting way more views. I know likes and comments stimulate the algorythms but there must be more to it. I would like to see one of their originals reach 1 million views. Any guesses on which one will get there first. Very interesting stuff and very cool you are tracking these stats. Thanks David.
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I second that!!
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That’s right, Tim. For videos that have had time to “settle down” I use the number of views in the past month. For new ones I start with daily numbers, and after a week or two I go to weekly numbers, and finally after a month or two I figure it’s accurate enough to use monthly numbers.
Great question about the race to a million! It’s probably not very accurate to use the current viewing rates to extrapolate even a few months into the future, but it’s the best I’ve got. So here are some extremely tentative predictions for MLT originals that could reach a million views within the next ten years:
Questionable: February 2028
Any Other Day: April 2028 (probably way too optimistic, since it’s still settling down)
If You Raise Your Head: May 2028 (also probably too optimistic)
Still a Friend of Mine: September 2028
I Bought Myself a Politician: April 2029
This Boy Is Mine: February 2030
So yeah, we need to find some way of supercharging the viewing rates so that these milestones aren’t so distant!
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I’ve been analyzing the evolution of the early viewing rates for various videos in an attempt to find a correlation with long-term viewing rates, with the goal of being able to estimate the eventual steady-state rate for any new video. That is, I’d like to be able to say that you can take the number of views per day after x days and divide it by some number n to determine what will be the approximate long-term rate. It turns out that it doesn’t seem to be that simple.
I looked at nine MLT videos that were posted on YouTube in 2022 for which I took daily data for each of the first nine days. All of them by this point have probably come close to levelling out, so I used the numbers for this March as their long-term viewing rates. I can say that on average they dropped to ten times their equilibrium rates after about eight days, but there’s a tremendous amount of scatter: after eight days, Here Comes the Sun was down to a little over four times its current rate, whereas Tired of Waiting was still cruising along at over 33 times its current rate.
There also doesn’t appear to be any significant correlation between decay rate and popularity: the most-viewed videos don’t consistently drop off either faster or slower than the less-viewed ones. This confounds my attempt to use the early numbers to predict the later ones. It would be so cool to be able to say after the first week that a given video will probably level out at a certain number of views per day, but I don’t think I can get there. I guess we’ll just have to enjoy the ride without worrying too much about the destination.
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Hi David,
Thanks for doing the research on all of this. These are the kind of questions I scratch my head about, curious but without the statistical background to pursue properly. No doubt there’s a lot of factors involved, some clear and others very murky. For instance, is the song one that more Youtubers are going to search for, driving new views faster than repeats?
We can’t tell (I don’t think) whether a view is new or a repeat, but we have sort of a proxy in likes, since you can only like a video once. Have you looked into the relation between views and likes? I wonder if there’s a correlation early on that can presage views over the longer term. For instance, Any Other Day currently has something like 25K fewer views than Junk, released around the same time. But Any Other Day has more likes than Junk, so a greater percentage of viewers are liking it over Junk.
Does this ratio of likes to views suggest that over time Any Other Day will get more views than Junk? Will Junk continue to outpace in views because it’s a McCartney song and people will always be searching for Macca? Beats me, but I think likes would be an interesting additional variable to fold into the analytical mix.
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That’s an excellent suggestion, David. I’ve never paid attention to the number of likes. I’ll have to start doing that and see if they have any predictive power.
I noticed that the viewing rate for Tell Me Why has actually increased over the last couple of days. The last time we got a significant delayed increase was for their previous Beatles cover, Here Comes the Sun. Since Beatles songs are always their most popular, that makes me think that if the viewing rate remains high enough for long enough, the algorithm recommends the song to more people, creating a second wave of new views.
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Even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Thanks for all of your efforts, David. Your results are always very interesting. I think you answer a lot of questions swirling through our minds as we watch the videos. Like, why aren’t more people watching them?
And thanks for being our resident MLT Statistician. Or does this sound better?
David Herrick – Statistician MLT
Read that again with a Darth Vader voice.
Thursday goes so slow
JP
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“‘Cuz I’ve got Friday on my mind”. Lol. Maybe the one thing we can’t predict is human behavior, although I’m sure someone is trying. I’ve spent some time herding cows from one pasture to the next and you can get most of them to follow each other but there’s always one or two that have to go the other way and head for the woods. Lol. Not sure what that has to do with anything just that there’s always those who look at things differently and do things in a different way. I’m glad we have 2 of those kind leading this club.
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I agree, Tim: human behavior is much too complicated to be predicted with simple mathematical models. In fact, that’s precisely why I never considered taking a sociology class!
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Thanks, JP. I think I’d prefer a pompous but vacuous title like Numeric Engagement Analytics Technician. (That would be NEAT!)
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Love it, David! Numeric Incremental Calculation Engineer would also be NICE!
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Or we could make your title Prognostication Engineer Researching Fluctuating Exponential Criteria Tirelessly but, hey, nobody’s PERFECT.
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Wow, Jeffery, I thought I had a singular talent for acronyms, but you are definitely a Professional Employment Enhancement Renderer!
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Thanks, David! Couldn’t resist joining in, and happy just to be mentioned in the same paragraph as you, if it would ever come to that!
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Here’s another week of data for Tell Me Why:
For April 1st, V = 8173 and C = 14.8. For April 2nd, V = 6031 and C = 10.9. For April 3rd, V = 4227 and C = 7.63. For April 4th, V = 2940 and C = 5.31. For April 5th, V = 1696 and C = 3.06. For April 6th, V = 3820 and C = 6.90. And for April 7th, V = 3826 and C = 6.91.
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Hold onto your love beads, folks. The numbers for Tell Me Why, averaged over the past week, are V = 5703 and C = 10.3. These figures are over THREE TIMES HIGHER than the numbers from nine days ago!
This degree of resurgence for a video has not happened before since I started taking these stats. I’m mystified as to why it’s occurring, but it sure is great to see!
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GROOVY news, David! “Tell Me Why” doesn’t seem to be covered as often as many other Beatles songs. Maybe that coupled with the iconic setting of the Cavern Club piques more Beatles fans interest than other covers enough to get more initial views. Then, the MLT magic and great acoustics promote more re-views and word-of-mouth recommendations. Just a thought. Thanks again for your diligent, selfless research!
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Tell Me Why is EXPLODING on YouTube: over 11,000 views in the last 24 hours! Here’s a comment from a few days ago:
“OK, I’ve never heard of you before, this just popped up on my youtube recommendations just now, but I’m totally digging this! Awesome! One of the best covers of a Beatles song I’ve heard!“
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Interesting. When I search for it on YT, it shows numbers from 2 weeks ago, 159k views.
I tried signing off and clearing cache, and it’s still what I see. Although I do see the comments updated.
Good ole Google. Always playing with the algorithms.
They do run different versions all the time when they’re beta testing something new. In the past I thought they targeted them geographically, and I see you’re like 700 miles away. Maybe that’s it.
But they likely still know it’s me, since my IP address hasn’t changed, and they do track unique views so that would be very easy to do.
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Chris, I’m pretty sure that 159K number is current, and “2 weeks ago” refers to how long it’s been since the video was posted. It should change to “3 weeks ago” in a few hours.
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Yeah, I guess it’s getting late. I knew that. Time to get some sleep. lol.
Before I cleared cache though, it didn’t show any comments more recent than 2 weeks ago either. So I didn’t see the one you mentioned. That was odd. But maybe understandable. Probably just to save them some cost by getting it from cache. Thanks. Good night.
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To see the most recent comments, click on “sort by” and “newest first”.
I’m about to go to bed too. Good night!
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Wow, that’s so awesome, thanks so much David for tracking “Tell Me Why”. It’s such an awesome performance, MLT brought that song to life for me. The problem these days is that gems like what Mona and Lisa put out on youtube get lost in a sea of rubbish out there, and when MLT’s video connect with some people who really appreciate good music through a good break with the youtube algorithms we get a big spike of views like this. It’s just a matter of time, MLT powder keg is building and there is going to be a massive explosion, and they will get the exposure and massive audience across the globe as they deserve.
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Averaged over the past week, Tell Me Why is at V = 5526 and C = 9.98. Amazing! I can’t wait to see if it has a ripple effect on the other videos in the next monthly report. Close to You has already reached its milestone number a full week ahead of the date I predicted at the end of March.
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