YouTube's traffic data for music questioned

From CNET News.com: On the same day that Warner Music Group reported lackluster earnings, the third largest recording company appears to have at least one thing to celebrate: dramatic new interest in its YouTube videos.

From December to January, the number of unique visitors to Warner's YouTube's clips appears to have more than doubled from 23.3 million to 47.5 million, according to ComScore. What that means is Warner's videos are now the most popular on the Web and in one month the third largest of the four major recording companies has leapfrogged the combined traffic of two larger labels as well as the music units of MySpace and AOL.

The problem with all that is the traffic figures are a little hinky.

According to numerous music insiders, the January data YouTube reported for Warner included visits to user-generated clips. Under YouTube's licensing agreement with Warner, users of the video-sharing site are allowed to incorporate Warner's material into homemade videos.

But Vevo's ComScore figures don't include visits to user-generated clips. YouTube only reports traffic to that site's professionally made music videos. Andrew Lipsman, a spokesman for ComScore, said he would have to see more data to determine whether any of ComScore's rules were broken.

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