The Pew Research Center has published its latest survey of American consumers, focused on the growth of online video.
It notes that the share of online adults who watch or download videos online has grown from 69% in 2009 to 78% today, with mobile phones a key driver in that growth. 72% of online adults say they watch videos on sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and while music videos aren’t the most popular category, they’re the fastest growing one.
According to Pew, music videos were watched by 22% of all US online adults in 2007, by 32% in 2009 and by 50% now, in 2013. That’s level with educational videos, and behind only How-to vids (56%) and comedy/humour (58%). But when Pew drilled down by age, it found that 81% of 18-29 year-olds in the US are watching music videos online, second by a whisker to comedy/humour’s 82%.
There’s more evidence of the popularity of music videos in the latest monthly top 100 YouTube channels chart from Tubefilter, which tracks views and subscribers on the service.
For the first time we can remember, Swedish gaming channel PewDiePie isn’t at the top of the list: even with 215.6m views in September, it couldn’t compete with Miley Cyrus’ 270.1m views.
In fact, Tubefilter notes that Vevo has 22 channels in the top 100, while four of the top five channels are music: after PewDiePie comes Turkish channel Mü-Yap (179m views in September), Katy Perry (162.1m) and Avicii (105m).
Back to Pew, though, whose research also notes that Americans aren’t just watching videos: a growing number are creating and sharing them too. The percentage of Americans who post videos online has grown from 14% in 2009 to 31% in 2013, but the latter percentage stands at 41% for 18-29 year-olds.
Finally, there’s the mobile angle: 41% of Americans use their phones to watch video, and 20% use them to post videos online.
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