Online Video Viewing Up, But TV Viewing Isn't Down

comScore's Video Metrix service recently reported that 161 million Internet users watched more than 25 billion online videos during the month of August in the United States, an all time record.

So what are the most popular video sites? It shouldn't be a surprise that Google's various sites surpassed 10 billion views and that represents about 40% of all videos viewed online, and as expected, YouTube accounts for 99% percent of of that. Microsoft sites ranked second with 547 million, which represents just 2.2%, followed by Viacom Digital with 539 million videos viewed (2.1%) and Hulu had 488 million (1.9%).

There are some other interesting findings in the report:

• The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 582 minutes of video, or 9.7 hours.
• 120.5 million viewers watched nearly 10 billion videos on YouTube.com (82.6 videos per viewer).
• 44.9 million viewers watched 340 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 12.7 videos, totaling 1 hour and 17 minutes of videos per viewer.
• 81.6 percent of the total Internet audience in the States viewed online video.

What's most interesting is what's not said in the report though. According to Larry Gerbrandt of Media Valuation Partners and a former Neilsen senior analyst, you can take the massive number of views enjoyed by YouTube in one 24 hour day and they still wouldn't equal a single hour of prime time television viewing on one network! That means that although the power of Internet video is increasing and television is decreasing, Internet video still has a way to go to catch up. Just because Internet viewing is up doesn't mean that we're consuming less television, we're just watching more video in more places.

Sony Music Breaks Into The Web's Top 10

Major label Sony Music recently became one of the Web’s top 10 entertainment music destinations, according to the independent comScore Media Metrix. This latest ranking now puts it alongside perennial music stalwarts like AOL, Yahoo!, MySpace Music, MTV Networks, Last.fm and imeem.

Sony Music’s network of artist websites attracted more than 33 million visits and almost 20 million unique visitors during June, an impressive amount for any website. So why the increased traffic?

Sony now employs a few new capabilities that have had a positive impact on the site's visitors and artist's fans. Their site now offers:

• a globalization ability so that fans can automatically view their favorite artist's site in their local language, interact with nearby fans, and receive regional music news.

• a rewards system for fans who visit frequently.

• a recommendations engine in the form of an on-demand audio player that suggests new tracks based on songs the user has already selected, as well as an integrated lyrics function.

While you wouldn't expect a major label to be so forward thinking in digital matters, Sony Music has shown that not only can it think for itself, but be successful at it too. Many other labels have good ideas as well but their implementation usually leaves something to be desired. This time, Sony has pulled it off.