Music Ally

YouTube and Last.fm have published year-end charts showing which artists were the most popular on their services this year.

Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent topped YouTube’s overall chart with more than 120 million views. For pure videos, Pitbull’s I Know You Want Me racked up 82 million views, followed by two Miley Cyrus vids: The Climb (64m) and Party in the U.S.A. (54m).

Meanwhile, Lady GaGa ruled the roost on Last.fm – her album The Fame was scrobbled 18.5 million times, followed by The Killers’ Day & Age (12.5m) and Lily Allen’s It’s Not Me, It’s You (10.5m). The hottest new artists were The xx, Fever Ray and La Roux.

Maybe they should team up in 2010 to take on the world. Hey, remember that MTV Awards when Madonna and Britney… Actually, no. NO.

Britain’s Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle’s audition has been watched more than 75 million times on YouTube so far, but rights-owner ITV hasn’t made a penny in advertising. Why? Because it’s still in negotiations with YouTube about what ads to run against its videos.

ITV apparently wants pre-roll adverts. “We don’t want to be part of YouTube’s standard terms and conditions, because content like Susan Boyle is unique,” ITV’s online director Ben McOwen Wilson tells Times Online. “I think both sides are being hard-nosed and commercial about it.”

Meanwhile, a YouTube spokesperson stresses it’s ITV’s decision not to monetise the clips. “Content owners often have many different priorities,” they say. “Some seek to generate advertising revenue, while others use the service to promote their offline TV show.”

You know Susan Boyle: that Scottish lady who everyone on Britain’s Got Talent laughed at until they heard her sing. She’s become something of an internet meme since then, thanks to YouTube and other video sites.

Analytics firm Visible Measures estimates that the videos of her performance have been watched more than 93.2 million times – with that figure doubling over this weekend alone. She’s gone viral!

Watch out for the original composers of I Dreamed A Dream complaining about their royalty payments soon. Meanwhile, we’re a bit puzzled by the fact that none of the uploads of Boyle’s performance on YouTube are allowed to be embedded.