UKH

Just a random check of a band called the Dead South shows a range of views for vids from 685K for one to 185 million for another!?

My own channel is completely random also.

Or is something else going on?

Well, these guys would sometimes pay people to "bump up their numbers," so yeah, some of these likes and views are "artificial" in a way.

How much would you have to pay to bump from 685K to 185 million?

The dead south are massive. They went viral with a song which is probably the one with 180 million views, then some people click to listen to the next, a few less people the next, and you end up with a pyramid-like number of views.

Yes, I guess that works. I didn't think they were that big of a band (from Regina in Saskatchewan) but I guess they have come on a bit

Yeah, it's one of these bands who are 'famous' from youtube and social media rather than from being played in the radio or being in the 'top ten'.  Most are one hit wonders, but a few are consistently good though not marketable in the traditional sense. Like these guys who are plain awesome youtube.com/watch?v=sdVpRvf-Vpc&

Yeah, liked that. But even they have this weird range that I find a little unconvincing. What kicks it off to go from a few thousand to 31 million? Does it just need to go viral on social media or is there a manipulation somewhere?

I follow one guy who used to get about 5,000 per vid he posted. Then he started to allow adverts and bang, he went to 25k.

I think the wildly unusual numbers usually come from "going viral" on other social media platforms. But the YouTube platform itself can have a big influence on how many views a video gets. They're tracking who clicks on it, who keeps watching it after clicking on it and how many likes/dislikes it gets. As well as which topics and interests it seems to align with. And the decisions they make based on that, about how many people to show it to and which other videos to connect it with, will have a huge impact on the views. That's why you see everyone on YouTube begging people to "like and subscribe". They both help to boost their viewing numbers and if they can get their subscribers to turn on notifications when they post videos, they insulate themselves a little from the vagaries of the all-powerful algorithm.

I know what you mean, but it is jut like i explained. I came across them by seeing the 31m video shared on facebook, then once in heir youtube page i tend to sort the videos by 'popular', so i watched  the second most popular, then the third, etc. Where people stop will be scattered, and the views disparity increase.

The thing with the ads can be that once you monetise it maybe youtube starts pushing the videos more in the 'suggested' tabs?

Who? 😉

One of the bands that I have not yet managed to see live because the venues were always sold out by the time I heard of the concerts!

CB

If anything, you could argue YouTube has more of an incentive to push non-monetised videos where they get all of the ad revenue rather than having to share it with the video creator.

But monetised videos will always tend to be more popular because there's a popularity threshold for being allowed to monetise your videos in the first place.

Do non-monetised videos have ads? I use ublock on youtube, so don't know either way