Lady Gaga Loses 156 Million Youtube Views
Posted by Joseph Lee on 01.28.2013
They were wiped away by Youtube...
NME reports that Lady Gaga had 156 million views removed from her Youtube account today, one month after they reduced the play counts for several major label acts by two billion views.
The first purge happened in December 2012. At the time, a Youtube spokesman told Billboard that the views were removed when Youtubve got rid of all the views that had been uploaded to invividual artist channels but then replaced and were showing up in their VEVO channels instead. The Gaga removal didn't affect her Youtube channel, just her VEVO channel. A spokesperson said in December: "This was not a bug or a security breach. This was an enforcement of our viewcount policy."
It was put into place after the site audited its viewing figures and suspected view count building from hackers, who were boosting views on certain videos without watching them.
Other artists to have similar clear-ups happen include Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Beyonce. VEVO is a music video website owned and operated by Sony Music Entertainment and UMG inside YouTube.
