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Final Major Project Context Essay

Updated: Mar 21, 2021


Investigating Popular Content Genres and Trends across large YouTube channels

For my final major project, I will be creating a YouTube Channel, as well as various forms of video content, to showcase what my channel will be about. The best starting point to investigate what video content I should produce is to research what types of content and genre of content seems to go viral on YouTube. I will be focusing on large You Tube channels, as they have the most influence on the platform, due to their large audiences, and there must be a reason for the channels to have these large audiences, because their content is high quality and the genre of content they produce is widely consumed and appreciated.

YouTube has had a large role in changing the role of media, pop culture and videos in today’s society, ever since its release in 2005. The website started off as “a service aiming to remove the technical barrier faced by non-expert users to share videos” (Burgess J and Green J, 2018). It was a website where anyone could upload various videos, and share them worldwide with ease. The video content on this site started as low quality, low input productions such as blogs, short comedy skits and school-level productions. The content started off being very innocent and fun, seeing as the videos were meant for recreational purposes, as being a ‘You Tuber’ wasn’t even in the thought process of these creators, nor was the thought of making money from these videos.

As traction started to gain around creators making more and more videos, about a wider range of content, such as reviews, music videos, arts and crafts and much more, the website started to gain lots of viewers worldwide. As the site started to become a household name the website would have a huge revamp, with the new addition of advertisements after a $1.65 billion takeover from Google. As the site started to become profitable, with the wide viewership, advertisers seized their chance to showcase ads on videos.”Between 2008 and 2011, the volume of videos uploaded to YouTube jumped from 10 hours every minute to 72 hours every minute” (Alexander J, 2019). This shows how quickly YouTube has been growing. The changes to advertising would change the content found and created on YouTube, due to the rules of the advertisements, it meant that certain types of content were no longer accepted on YouTube, as they would get demonetized. Content that involved violence, controversial issues, swearing or vulgar activities would no longer get monetized, meaning that these types of channels started to disappear, and create a new YouTube landscape.

With the newer and stricter rules, channels that did have ‘family friendly’ content, started to get monetized, meaning for the first time, people could start to earn money from creating YouTube videos. This led to channels becoming more professional, with higher standards of work going into the videos, and the content within the videos increasing in production, as well as targeting different audiences, who are more family friendly, or were less likely to be demonetized. YouTube has changed from an innocent amateur video sharing website, to a large scale professional and high quality video production company. “In October 2015, YouTube launched a $9.99-per-month subscription plan that included ad-free viewing and new original YouTube series” (Alexander J, 2019). The start of YouTube Red shows the switch between amateur videos and high quality, professional videos. YouTube wanted to change its professionalism, by encouraging high quality productions, and this would be the case going forward, up to this point in time. This is some context behind how YouTube got started and has become the website we use today, and some information about why the videos on it are like they are. I will now go over content trends and genre of videos that are popular on YouTube over the years.

The YouTube trends change drastically from year to year, with some trends returning a few years later and some being a one-time event. The trends range from creating draw-my-lives, to rap battles, to cook-offs and much more. YouTube trends range from one off videos, to whole channels being dedicated to new trends. YouTube trends change year in year out, starting with the old trends of almost every You Tuber creating a draw-my-life once they reached a certain amount of subscribers. This trend was completed by every YouTube channel, no matter what the usual content consisted of. It didn’t matter if the channel was a gaming channel, beauty channel or tech review channel, everyone used to create draw-my-life challenges, as they always did well in terms of views. Other one off videos that a lot of channels created include recreating certain challenger or dances, such as the Harlem Shake in 2013, house tours and specific subscriber amount celebration videos such as montages. Early on in YouTube history, blogging was a massive trend, where YouTube’s would sit in front of their cameras and talk about specific or general topics, such as their own lives or news and much more. But as YouTube has evolved, these blogs have transformed in vlogs. The videos still remain as the You Tuber talking to the camera, but instead of being in a stationary location, the You Tuber is normally living their daily life, taking the camera with them, or exploring around the world. Vlog footage includes the You Tuber walking around new locations or around their cities, and have a lot of cinematic elements to them, such as b-roll footage between parts of talking, as well as drone footage, and cinematic. This is an example of how YouTube has changed since 2005. The quality of videos have improved massively, what started as a simple one take shot of someone talking to the camera, has changed to a cinematic mini movie, involving cinematic b-roll, high quality audio, and post production editing. Videos need to be high quality in the modern era, to keep the audience interested. Videos are also a lot longer, to fit advertisements in. The 10 minute mark is a staple in YouTube videos, to apply a mid-roll advertisement, as well as an advert at the end.

Other popular YouTube trends that have come and gone include prank videos of You Tubers pranking other You Tubers or the public, although this type of content is not as popular anymore, due to backlash over the extreme nature of a lot of the pranks, as well as some of the pranks being staged. Rap battles had a year or two of domination on YouTube, with content such as rap battles between You Tubers, famous characters or animations of rap battles. Animations themselves also had a massive year in 2019, and still remain relevant to this day. Beauty videos, Reaction videos, gaming videos, dancing videos and podcasts have all risen and dipped in popularity on YouTube, but are all massive trends at this moment in time. I have compiled the YouTube trends list from personal memory, as well as multiple websites such (Brown C, 2018) and (Newman K, 2015).

“The YouTube trending page displays a wide variety of videos that show what’s happening on YouTube and around the world” (Keyword Tool Blog) The trending page allows users to see popular topics, which allows for channels with smaller followings to make a video about a popular topic, and be put in the mix of people possibly watching their content, because the content is popular at the time.

In terms of content genres that are popular on YouTube, the answer is very complicated. “You Tubers tend to create content focused on specific niches, and therefore the population can be organized by categories” (MediaKix). The most popular genres on YouTube include Gaming, Music, Comedy, Beauty, News, Education and Lifestyle. Gaming videos can be anything from play-throughs to highlights and more. Music ranges from music videos, to covers of songs and performance videos. Comedy ranged from skits to short movies and challenge videos. Beauty consists of tutorials, hauls, guides and fashion. There are so many sub genres within these genres, that it makes it very hard to determine what are the most popular genres on YouTube, especially because the target audience is worldwide, as well as ranging from children to adults. I used this website to compile a list of popular YouTube genres (MediaKix).

Another method to identify the most popular genres on YouTube is by looking at the largest You Tubers on the platform. In the modern era, the most subscribed channels are all large corporations, such as T-Series, of which create Bollywood music or Coco Melon, who create kids songs and educational videos. Apart from the large corporations, the other top spots are inhabited by singers such as Justin Bieber, Marshmellow, Black Pink and Ed Sheeran. However there are some independent You Tubers at the top of the list, Such as Pewdiepie, Dude Perfect, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, SSSniperwolf, Smosh, David Dobrik and many more. These channels are primarily gaming channels, but they all also create lifestyle videos in the form of vlogs, challenges and sometime dabble in music as well. From my time on YouTube, I would personally say the top 4 genres are Gaming, Music and Lifestyle/Comedy. A lot of the big channels have adapted their content as the trends have changed, as well as having a large genre of videos, to attract larger target audiences. I have compiled this list of popular YouTube’s using this website (Social Book).

To conclude, the YouTube trends change very drastically, but no matter what genre of channel you create, it is always worth adjusting content to these trends in some ways, to gain more exposure from new audiences. As well as this, it is good to have a specific niche for YouTube channels, to develop a passionate audience, but it has been proven by channels such as Pewdiepie and Smosh, that you can create more than one genre of content and still grow. I will make sure my channel has a specific niche and an obvious main genre, but I will definitely dip into other genres and content types, but the main categories I will investigate are gaming, comedy and lifestyle. This mix will allow me to create short movies, skits as well as more laid back, regular “You Tuber” videos such as challenges, pranks and trend videos.



Bibliography



2.) (Alexander J, 2019), The Creators Issue, The Golden Age of YouTube is Over, available at; https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18287318/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-demonetization-adpocalypse-premium-influencers-creators (accessed 18th March 2021)


3.) (Brown C, 2018) Here are the Top 10 Most Popular Types of Videos on YouTube, available at; https://mag.octoly.com/here-are-the-top-10-most-popular-types-of-videos-on-youtube-4ea1e1a192ac (accessed 19th March 2021)


4.) (Newman K, 2015) The 26 Biggest YouTube Trends, available at; https://tech.co/news/26-biggest-youtube-trends-2015-05 (accessed 19th March 2021)


5.) (MediaKix) the 20 Most Popular Types of YouTube’s, available at; https://mediakix.com/blog/most-popular-types-of-youtubers/ (accessed 20th March 2021)


6.) (Social Book) Top 200 YouTubers, available at; https://socialbook.io/youtube-channel-rank/top-200-youtubers (accessed 20th March 2021)


7.) (Keyword Tool Blog) How to Use YouTube Trends to Grow your Channel, available at ; https://keywordtool.io/blog/youtube-trends/ (accessed 21st March 2021)




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