YouTube announce music awards won on views and shares

Video website YouTube will hold their first music awards this year, celebrating musicians and acts who are most popular online.

Lady Gaga's YouTube channel has had more than 71 million views Photo: Getty

YouTube will crown its most popular musicians later this year as part of its inaugural YouTube Music Awards. The shortlist of nominees, which will be announced on October 17, will comprise the acts who have gained most views over the past year. The winners will be decided by YouTube’s hundreds of millions of users, who will be encouraged to share and promote their preferred nominee.

On November 3 the winners will be announced at an award ceremony, which will be live-streamed and feature performances from Lady Gaga, Eminem and Arcade Fire, who have all had viral successes on the site this year. They will be joined by YouTube stars Lindsey Stirling, a 27-year-old dancer and violinist who came to fame through her YouTube channel, Lindseystomp, and CDZA, an experimental music collaborative who have gained more than 20.5 million views since joining the site in 2011.

Similar to the YouTube Comedy Week held earlier this year, the awards will be preceded by a week of new content being released onto the site by nominees, including videos, covers, interviews and concerts.

The awards arrive at the end of a year in which YouTube has been recognised for its impact on music consumption. The site, which is owned by search giant Google, is visited by more than 1 billion unique users a month. So many of the 6 billion hours of video watched per month on the site are of music that, in February, the US singles chart decided to include YouTube and sister site Vevo views in the Billboard Hot 100 in February. Of the 10 most-watched videos of all time, nine are music videos.

This year several musicians have broken records with their YouTube views. Miley Cyrus’s controversial video for Wrecking Ball drew more than 19 million views during its first 24 hours online and Korean star Psy gained more than 215 million views of his single Gentleman in 10 days, although he still retains the most watched video record for his 2012 Gangnam Style.