A desktop view of the Analytics for Artists feature in YouTube Studio.
YouTube is rolling out a new analytics hub for creators on its platform today (July 7), which will provide expanded real-time statistics for videos and allow artists the ability to see details on a song’s combined performance across all the videos in which it appears on the platform.
The new hub, called Analytics For Artists, will be incorporated into YouTube Studio and be available for all official artist channels, and allow artists to see detailed performance metrics for their music on channels beyond their own uploads, such as fan-made videos and videos for songs on which an artist is featured or for which they collaborated, in addition to grouping them by song and filtering by device type, gender, age and more demographics. (Read the company's blog about it here.)
The ability to group videos by song in order to see metrics for all the activity of a particular song on the platform is a particular simplifier for artists whose music is often part of fan-created uploads. The company noted that of the top 1,000 music artists on its platform, more than 20% of chart-eligible views on average are derived from fan-created videos, including covers, lyric videos, dances and challenges, among others. The other channels using an artist’s music are largely collected through ContentID claims, and artists can toggle back and forth to see metrics for their own uploads and from others’ videos.
“This is a mic drop product," YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen said in a statement announcing the new analytics tools. "We can't wait for artists and their teams to fully understand their global audience and the power of YouTube's platform. Turn the lights on and see where you are going. Now you've got the full picture of your music on YouTube."
YouTube has allowed artists access to realtime analytics since the fall of 2014, and the new features are designed to provide more depth for artists, like average view length, click-through rates for links on videos and to an artist’s page from thumbnails or other links, video performance metrics over time and the ways in which audiences are viewing videos. The analytics will also be available for artists on the YouTube Studio mobile app for the first time.