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Simultaneous MLT YouTube Views
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By the time you read this, Ask My Why, will have 200K views. 👏👏
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It’s official: 200K views at 1:53 PM New York time today!
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Interesting… when I wrote that post, I had checked after a couple of numbers updates on the video, and it was adding about 5 views a minute, so I estimated (all remaining equal) that it would hit 200K by about 5:30 am NY time. Did it not make it until just before 2 pm?
It was less than 800 views away then, now it’s at 200,431 (7pm) which means it did about 1200 views in over 16 hours or about 1.25 views per minute, a huge drop (75%) from 5 vpm.
This is assuming that it hit 200K just before 2pm. Then adding 430 views in the last 5 hours, gives us an very similar average of 1.4 vpm 🤔 I would never suggest YouTube could possibly be tinkering with the numbers? Is 2:30 am (EST) the peak time for MLT viewership? 🤐
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Hey, Tomás.
I was refreshing the page frequently today as it got close, and it jumped from 199,994 to 200,001 at 1:53 PM.
I did a quick check yesterday to get a new 24-hour average, and it was around 2500 views per day, or about 1.7 views per minute, so that sounds consistent with most of what you’ve found. Five views per minute seems really high, and I’m not sure why it would be so. All I can think of is that the count is updated once every few minutes, so if you happened to time it for just the one minute during which the update occurred you’d get an overestimate.
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Over the past half hour it’s being doing 2.3 vpm
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Over the past week, Tell Me Why has averaged V = 1402 and C = 2.53. So it looks like it’s not going to be the next coming of Please Mr. Postman, but it should be one of the top selections for a long time.
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For the last hour of April 30th, Sugar Man is at V = 9024 and C = 24.0. More daily data on this one in a few days.
Monthly report coming up shortly!
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Here are the numbers for April. Data are averaged over the period from April 1st through April 30th, except for Tell Me Why, which is just over the last two days. Sugar Man is omitted, since it’s just a day-old Sugar Baby at this point.
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simultaneous views:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: C = 9.95 (-2.16)
2) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: C = 3.55 (+0.47)
3) You Can’t Do That: C = 3.05 (+1.29)
4) Here Comes the Sun: C = 3.02 (+0.12)
5) Drive My Car (2012): C = 2.62 (+0.36)
6) I Saw Her Standing There: C = 2.46 (+0.70)
7) Nowhere Man: C = 2.12 (+0.50)
8) When I’m Sixty-Four: C = 1.93 (+0.08)
9) If I Fell: C = 1.87 (+0.21)
10) Tell Me Why: C = 1.86 (new)
11) This Boy: C = 1.69 (+0.45)
12) Day Tripper: C = 1.68 (+0.22)
13) Wish You Were Here: C = 1.67 (+0.22)
14) Reacting to Our First Music Videos: C = 1.61 (+0.41)
15) If You Raise Your Head: C = 1.42 (-0.05)
16) Till There Was You: C = 1.36 (+0.25)
17) Africa: C = 1.33 (+0.14)
18) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): C = 1.29 (-0.03)
19) Lola: C = 1.28 (+0.17)
20) I’m a Believer: C = 1.16 (+0.21)
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views per day:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: V = 3508 (-764)
2) You Can’t Do That: V = 1401 (+593)
3) Drive My Car (2012): V = 1358 (+191)
4) Here Comes the Sun: V = 1243 (+49)
5) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: V = 1120 (+150)
6) I Saw Her Standing There: V = 1048 (+299)
7) Tell Me Why: V = 1029 (new)
8) When I’m Sixty-Four: V = 952 (+36)
9) Nowhere Man: V = 946 (+225)
10) If I Fell: V = 846 (+94)
11) Day Tripper: V = 735 (+99)
12) This Boy: V = 718 (+181)
13) Till There Was You: V = 718 (+135)
14) You’re Going to Lose That Girl: V = 541 (+162)
15) Please Please Me: V = 536 (-6)
16) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): V = 532 (-11)
17) I’m Looking Through You: V = 515 (+74)
18) Wish You Were Here: V = 493 (+65)
19) If You Raise Your Head: V = 471 (-17)
20) In My Life: V = 465 (+44)
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Almost all the numbers are up significantly this month, which may be attributable at least in part to the splash made by the Tell Me Why video. But regardless of the reason, it’s nice to be able to put a bunch of parenthetical plus signs after the titles!
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Hi David,
Speaking of April, the MLT channel had a total 1,176,258 views for the month, an increase of 177,404 over March. With a daily average of 33,925 new subscribers so far in 2023, April did 5,284 better, averaging 39,208 per day.
Since early last August (about the time YT gave the channel the checkmark), I’ve been tracking daily channel growth and noting whenever YT ticks up the subscriber number by 1,000. It’s all in a Google spreadsheet if anyone wants to dig into the numbers.
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David, that’s a great idea to keep track of the total number of views of all the videos! I didn’t realize that number was available, but I just found it under the “about” tab.
I think a lot of us stats nerds would love to see a graph (or at least a table) of the number of views per month and the number of new subscriptions per month as functions of time.
It looks like we’re just months away from a total of 100,000,000 views!
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Here’s a chart of views for the MLT Youtube channel each month since my first full month of tracking, September 2022.
I’m a novice at Google Sheets, so it’s pretty simple. I’ve also tracked when the subscriber count ticked up 1,000; but I haven’t figured out how to add that. I’d like to go back and add in when new items were posted. I only have some of that recorded, so I’ll need to check Twitter for announcements of new videos so I can fill in the gaps.
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Thanks, David! I hope you keep taking these data for a long time, so that we can evaluate long-term trends and shorter-term fluctuations in the overall viewing rates and new subscriptions.
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Wow a 100 Million views, that is amazing. I’m waiting for the day a single MLT original will pull those kinds of views in short order.
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That would be great, Jung. Currently Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out is on pace to be the first to reach 100M views… in 75 years!
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That’s very interesting, I’d love to get the data in an Excel sheet, I’d love to do different graphs. With the data.
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Hi David, aside from the numbers it amazes me that the Beatles songs are still so popular some 60 years since they burst onto the scene. Even though Mona and Lisa have many great original songs and have done many great covers of other bands, the Beatles covers are the top 12 or better on each list. The Beatles were and still are the most popular band of all time and there’s not even a close second. What a band.
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Tim, it would be interesting to track down any other groups on YouTube who write original music but are best known for their Beatles (or other 60’s) covers, and see how the two sets of songs compare with regard to the number of views.
I’m curious as to where MLT ranks with regard to the relative popularity of their original stuff. I’ve seen good covers of old songs by various groups that have inspired me to check out their originals, but with the exception of MLT I’ve found their originals to be generally lacking in quality.
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David , one of the other independent artists I follow is Reina Del Cid. Her and her friend Toni Lindgren do a lot of the same covers as the Twins and also some originals although I don’t think they have recorded any original albums. I would think their numbers would be a good comparison with the Twins. Samantha Fish may be comparable as she has a few covers with lots of views but also has 7 original albums but is mostly blues orientated. Liliac band may also be comparable. They’re a family band from California that play heavier rock music. They have a couple original albums and covers that include Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Enter Sandman by Metallica. Very talented group of 5 siblings managed by their father. Truth is I don’t listen to these bands as much since I found the Mona Lisa Twins.
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This reminds me of The Twins Duo Sessions. Just two artists with two guitars, rockin’ out next to the campfire.https://youtu.be/In7MChGC2Wo
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Agreed Tim. I very much enjoy Reina & Toni and Samantha Fish.
Another prolific cover band with a big following is Fossils & Foxes in Georgia.
That should make interesting comparisons.
Cheers to Tim & both Davids
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Thanks, guys. I’ll check those groups out.
Actually I found and watched Reina del Cid’s cover of I’ve Just Seen a Face a few weeks ago, but wasn’t terribly impressed with it. However, I now see that they also covered Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, which earns them another look. I might not have initially delved deeper into MLT if not for that song; I figure any group that covers it must be cool!
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Here are some daily data for Sugar Man. For May 1st, V = 7137 and C = 19.0. For May 2nd, V = 2532 and C = 6.74. For May 3rd, V = 1692 and C = 4.50. For May 4th, V = 2506 and C = 6.67. And for May 5th, V = 2006 and C = 5.39.
Meanwhile, averaged over the past week, Tell Me Why is at V = 891 and C = 1.61.
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What is it with “Please Mr Postman/Wipeout”? It’s been in the most viewed spot forever, week after week. It certainly has a powerful longing, wanting something feel to it expressed so beautifully by Mona and Lisa’s vocals. It’s more compelling than the Beatles and Carpenters version to me.
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I’ve been wondering that myself for a long time, Jung. The YouTube comments tend to focus on the high energy of the performance (especially the drumming) and the transition between the songs. Perhaps the video gets a lot of clicks from people who are simply curious how you could combine those two particular songs.
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Hi Jung, I agree, the video checks all the boxes. It’s a really high quality performance with high energy, a great twist to lift it up by switching to Wipeout. I think I mentioned in some other post, that I shared this with the teenage daughter of a friend and she was mesmerized, watched it back to back a few times.
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Hi Tomas
Yeah the appeal and pull of MLTs Mr Postman is strong as cited by the example with your friends daughter. Mona and Lisa captured the Marvelettes vision for this song with absolute perfection.
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A few more days of data for Sugar Man: for May 6th, V = 1388 and C = 3.70. For May 7th, V = 988 and C = 2.63. For May 8th, V = 568 and C = 1.51. For May 9th, V = 528 and C = 1.41. And for May 10th, V = 468 and C = 1.25.
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Here’s a graph from David Yeargin’s data of total Channel Views. I wanted to answer the question:
How many extra views does the MLT channel get when a video is posted?
For that I took day 0 as the posting date of each video, and then took the increase of views compared to a week earlier. So the numbers on the vertical axis is the extra views compared to a week prior. The If You Raise Your Head video was released on a Monday, so I take that day’s views and subtract the number of views of the prior Monday. For day 1, I take the Tuesday views and subtract the previous Tuesday’s numbers and so on. Day 8 would be subtracting from the release date. The average weekly views over the last 2 years seems to be about 150K.
So the numbers are the total channel views increase for each day over a week prior, or weekly increase on a rolling basis.
In other words, this gives us an idea of how the videos perform compared to each other.
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This is terrific, Tomás! It shows that the delayed growth spurt that we saw with the Tell Me Why video is mirrored by the growth in the overall number of views. Any Other Day seems to be the only other one with a similar pattern.
Do you tend to see sudden upward jumps from day negative one (i.e., the day before a video is released) to day zero? Since most videos get the most views on day zero, that would be an interesting comparison.
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That was a great suggestion David, so I moved the start date to a week prior to the release, so release date is now the in the middle of the graph.
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Ah, yes, now we can see several upticks correlated with new releases. Thanks, Tomás!
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Hi Tomás,
Thanks for doing this! I’m glad to see all those numbers I’ve been capturing being put to good use. I’m motivated to do better at marking the date a video launched (I sometimes had to go back to Twitter for the MLT announcement) and see if there’s other data I could be capturing.
Lots to think about after this graph. And thanks to David H. for the idea of adjusting the covered period so that launch is shown in the middle. It really isolates the new video’s impact.
One thing I am going to start to try to track are individual video views and likes as the videos get rolled out. It seems to me that one measure of popularity would be the early likes-to-views ratio as people see the video for the first time and immediately respond. Since you can’t “like” a video more than once, over time views will grow faster than likes. But early on, views and likes would be more closely aligned. I know YT isn’t exact in reporting some of these numbers, so we’ll see how it goes.
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David, you previously mentioned tracking likes, so I jotted those down for the first ten days of Sugar Man. As you predicted, the like-to-view ratio stayed pretty constant, with maybe a slight decrease. But yeah, it would be interesting to compare the early ratio with longer-term figures for this and other videos.
Hooray, we have an emerging community of statisticians within the MLT club! We need to design our own T-shirt.
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Thank you guys.
It’s interesting to me that the recent videos are making a much bigger impact than the older ones did.
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The MLT powder keg is building approaching critical mass, and there is going to be a massive explosion with a song very soon that’s gonna make a major impact around the world, as each new song becomes more impactful to a bigger and bigger audience they have been building over the years.
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I’ve had a theory for a while that the Twins are doing their marathon running since they know they’ll have to outrun crowds of fans soon, like the Beatles did. Twinmania. I’m only partially joking about that.
I think the explosion is already in progress.
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Averaged over the last eight days, Sugar Man is at V = 442 and C = 1.18.
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Averaged over the last six days, Sugar Man is at V = 328 and C = 0.87.
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For the Why? Q&A video, for the last hour of May 28th, V = 4416 and C = 69.8. (The C values are going to be crazy high for the number of views because the video is so long.) More daily data on this one in a few days.
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Okay, here are the numbers for May. All data are averaged over the period from May 1st through May 31st except for Sugar Man, which is just for the last week. The Why? Q&A video is new and still rapidly evolving, so it is not included.
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simultaneous views:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: C = 6.10 (-3.85)
2) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: C = 3.08 (-0.47)
3) Drive My Car (2012): C = 2.90 (+0.28)
4) Here Comes the Sun: C = 2.28 (-0.74)
5) You Can’t Do That: C = 2.02 (-1.03)
6) I Saw Her Standing There: C = 1.70 (-0.76)
7) Wish You Were Here: C = 1.62 (-0.05)
8) Nowhere Man: C = 1.58 (-0.54)
9) If I Fell: C = 1.56 (-0.31)
10) When I’m Sixty-Four: C = 1.37 (-0.56)
11) Tell Me Why: C = 1.35 (-0.51)
12) This Boy: C = 1.34 (-0.35)
13) Day Tripper: C = 1.34 (-0.34)
14) Morning Has Broken: C = 1.19 (+0.26)
15) Vincent: C = 1.14 (+0.00)
16) Lola: C = 1.13 (-0.15)
17) Till There Was You: C = 1.11 (-0.25)
18) Africa: C = 1.06 (-0.27)
19) If You Raise Your Head: C = 1.02 (-0.40)
20) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): C = 1.00 (-0.29)
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views per day:
1) Please Mr. Postman / Wipe Out: V = 2151 (-1357)
2) Drive My Car (2012): V = 1501 (+143)
3) While My Guitar Gently Weeps: V = 970 (-150)
4) Here Comes the Sun: V = 939 (-304)
5) You Can’t Do That: V = 927 (-474)
6) Tell Me Why: V = 746 (-283)
7) I Saw Her Standing There: V = 725 (-323)
8) If I Fell: V = 706 (-140)
9) Nowhere Man: V = 705 (-241)
10) When I’m Sixty-Four: V = 678 (-274)
11) Till There Was You: V = 587 (-131)
12) Day Tripper: V = 583 (-152)
13) This Boy: V = 571 (-147)
14) Wish You Were Here: V = 479 (-14)
15) Morning Has Broken: V = 461 (+97)
16) You’re Going to Lose That Girl: V = 453 (-88)
17) San Francisco: V = 422 (+69)
18) I’m Looking Through You: V = 419 (-96)
19) Sound of Silence: V = 413 (-29)
20) Twist and Shout (w/ Mike Sweeney): V = 410 (-122)
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All in all it was a rather brutal month for viewing rates, with the gains of April pretty much being wiped out. (David Y., do you see a similar pattern for total views?) Perhaps April views spiked because of the release of Tell Me Why (which is still doing very well), and things have now returned to normal. As always, time will tell. Interestingly, Morning Has Broken has broken into the top 20 for the first time.
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Hi David H.,
Yes, it looks like May was not a strong month for channel views. In fact, it was the slowest month since last October, with an average 27,955 daily views. Maybe it was a case of reversion to the mean, as April daily views were strong at 39,209. “Sugar Man” is not nearly as well known as “Tell Me Why” and couldn’t contribute to views in May the way the Beatles song did in April.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: “If Your Raise Your Head,” released a month later than “Junk,” has almost as many views and more likes than the McCartney tune. “Any Other Day,” released a month after “If You Raise Your Head,” is about 20,000 views behind that and “Junk” but has more likes than either.
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David Y., it would be cool to track whether there is in general a correlation between the month-to-month variations in total views and the popularity of the most recently posted MLT video.
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Hmm, I’ve thought about that. Certainly it seems likely that if a new video comes out that’s immediately popular it would have some kind of spillover in the channel as a whole. Okay, I have an idea of how I could do this for the time I’ve been tracking. I’ll go do some math and come back with the results.
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Here are some data for the first few days for the Why? Q&A video:
For May 29th, V = 3272 and C = 51.7. For May 30th, V = 1032 and C = 16.3. For May 31st, V = 697 and C = 11.0. For June 1st, V = 526 and C = 8.32. And for June 2nd, V = 370 and C = 5.85.
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Here are some more daily numbers for the Why? Q&A video:
For June 3rd, V = 303 and C = 4.79. For June 4th, V = 238 and C = 3.77. For June 5th, V = 261 and C = 4.13. For June 6th, V = 195 and C = 3.08. And for June 7th, V = 153 and C = 2.43.
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