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.
That skews the power law even further.
What's really interesting is that LOG(LOG(video views)) looks pretty much the same:
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 $103,772There's a real revolution in video entertainment going on right now. And youtube is still growing at a phenomenal rate. The recent example of the explosive popularity of the Gangnam Style music video is a perfect case in point. It's not just "viral", it's a cultural phenomenon, and it's taking place on youtube whereas in the past you'd expect people to be exposed to popular music videos through television.
If I were in the traditional TV business I would be all over this. I'd be snapping up talent off youtube and I'd be setting up deals and producing content for the internet, etc. But it looks like this is still a case of two separate worlds. I suspect the "oh shit" moment will come when a more traditional format TV show or movie published on youtube becomes wildly successful, and it's really only a matter of time until that happens.
I'm really curious to see some more data here, I have a feeling that the disparity is severe.
Same thing with wealth distribution and taxes - averages are pointless since 1 rich guy + 99 poor guys will have an average of ~1/100 the rich guy (which is still a lot of money) - even though the poor guys have $0 in assets (usually negative equity because of debt).
The median of that distribution would be $0 - hence providing a better representation of actual probabilistic income/taxes.
Pick a channel, multiply views by a ~$2.00 mixed CPM. It takes around 11.5m views to make $23k.
It would be interesting to know if this data includes PSY, who accounts for nearly a million dollars in the last 30 days alone.
That said, while we definitely exist in a "hits" driven culture, I expect such hits would be boundary crossing, and I see no reason to presume a middle class can't exist in any given boundary. (Or, maybe, it could grow toward that.) I'm reminded of the recent post on Pandora talking about "middle class musicians".
My point being you're right. We need more data.
Other interesting questions: How much of that is profit? Relatedly, does it cost a prohibitive amount to have a highly successful youtube channel? Does amount spent on production each month correlate with amount earned, or do consumers care much more about the content than the production quality?
What is the median income of the top 1000 channels? What's the overall median income of active youtube partners? What's the median income of channels produced (primarily) by a single person?
Some of these questions should be answerable by looking at available stats, like views for the top couple of channels versus the lower end of the top 1000. (Are the actual channels in the top 1000, preferable ranked, available somewhere?) I'll see if I can answer any more of them in the morning...
Something a lot of people seem to forget too is for every video they put out their old videos still get views. It's like investments, the money they make compounds over time because for every new video that's more and more views. So as their viewership grows, so does their previous video views and so do their potential views for the future. Even if someone "only" does 10,000,000 views from new videos in a month they can still be doing substantial revenue from old videos. This is how some of the bigger channels work, they produce incredibly popular videos every couple of months and fill the time with smaller videos.
A good example of that would be Captain Sparklez [2], a guy that makes video game music and commentaries, his music videos can do anywhere from 10 million to 70 million views and he then produces game play commentaries between his bigger hits.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/pewdiepie [2] http://www.youtube.com/user/CaptainSparklez/videos?sort=p...
What are other ways to intuitively understand power law distributions? Where are the raw data for this one?
2$ ECPM.
http://www.youtube.com/user/NollywoodLove
The TechCrunch article with the claim:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/14/you-think-hollywood-is-roug...
RWJ claims here that he earns over a million dollars a year purely on Adsense:
http://willvideoforfood.com/2011/04/01/ray-william-johnson-i...
So who's fooling who?
If the average 23k$ hold true for the Top 1000 and if the 2$ eCPM holds true, why did the 5.000th channel make an estimated 57,371.70$? (28685850 AdViews * 2$ eCPM / 1000)
What am I getting wrong here?
Edit: The numbers are totals... OK, I get it. ;-)
Case in point: http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/reply-girls-yogscast-m...