Even as Sirius XM has bounced back from its financial troubles of past years to build the second largest entertainment subscriber base in the United States — with over 70 influential music channels — it has always privately resented not always being given full credit as a supporter of newsongs and emerging talent. The kind of talent that emerges on YouTube these days.
Over at YouTube, the world’s most important and largest music distribution platform also has a perception challenge. It would like to be seen more as a serious media brand for advertisers working with major media brands. Media brands like Sirius XM. Sirius XM, which now has more than 26 million subscribers in the U.S., is second only to Netflix in entertainment, which had over 33 million subscribers at the end of 2013.
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The respective challenges of Sirius XM and YouTube are being addressed by the companies joining forces to create a new weekly radio show on Sirius XM’s popular Hits 1 channel. The new show The YouTube 15, will feature 15 emerging songs from a mix of known and unsigned artists curated by a team from Sirius XM based on a chart of top YouTube views as well as the rate of growth of views.
As the digitization of media accelerates the pace at which entertainment content is discovered and shared on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, big media and technology companies are collaborating to offer new ways to stay relevant and keep track and measure trends. Earlier this year Billboard formed a partnership with Twitter to create a RealTime chart based on U.S. music conversation on the micro-blogging service.
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YouTube, which has over 1 billion visitors each month, has in the last year worked on a number of partnerships to make it more a part of the mainstream music/media business including launching a YouTube Music Awards show last fall to mixed reception. It has created YouTube channels on Virgin America and other airlines.
The YouTube 15, which goes debuts on July 11, will be hosted by one of YouTube’s most popular stars Jenna Marbles who has more than 13 million subscribers on her channel with more than 1.5 billion views of her videos.