Exploring the user-generated content (UGC) uploading behavior on youtube

Abstract

YouTube is the world's largest video sharing platform where both professional and non-professional users participate in creating, uploading, and viewing content. In this work, we analyze content in the music category created by the non-professionals, which we refer to as user-generated content (UGC). Non-professional users frequently upload content (UGC) that are parodies, remakes, or covers of the music videos uploaded by professionals, namely the official record labels. Along with the success of official music videos on YouTube, we find the increased participation of users in creating the UGC related to the music videos. In this study, we characterize the UGC uploading behavior in terms of what, where, and when. Furthermore, we measure the relationship between the popularity of the original content and creation of the related UGC. We find that the UGC uploading behavior is different depending on the types of the UGC and across different genres of music videos. We also find that UGC sharing is a highly global activity; popular UGC is created from all over the world despite the fact that the popular music videos originate from a very limited number of locations. Our findings imply that utilizing the information on re-created UGC is important in order to understand and to predict the popularity of the original content.