The music video has been around for a couple of generations now. Most people who listen to music also like to watch their music. Since the launch of Vevo in 2009 music video viewership has been increasing. As of the end of 2013 music videos viewership on Vevo reached 55 billion views globally, up 33% from 2012. Monthly views at the end of 2012 was approximately 5.5 billion.

The number of people watching music videos has spurred Google to create Google Play using their vast collection of music videos. In fact, of the millions of videos streamed every day on YouTube music videos are the most popular. Forty percent of YouTube’s audience watches music video — more than any other category.

Specially, who watches videos is not as surprising as where they are watched more. The U.S. only accounted for 12.3 billion views in 2013. In the UK the views are around 2.6 billion. In each case the majority of views is on a smartphone, tablet, or a connected TV. But are these the only places where people watch music videos? What about the rest of Europe, or Asia? Who is watching music videos and what are they watching?

For the most part all of the music video information available in the sites linked above are from record labels promoting artists under contract with them. They each have a YouTube channel and remarkable number of views to show for their collections. But one type of video that has been ignored and not included in any statistical breakdown is the fan made — or unofficial — music video.

There is a type of fan made music video called Vidding that has been around for some time. But this title doesn’t seem to fit the number of unofficial music videos made every day by students for class projects or just for fun by countless others. There is a app called VideoStar that helps people make their own music video and upload it to YouTube. It seems to be used mostly by pre-teen kids and only has a few effects, but its popularity highlights the popularity of the fan made video.

Expect to see more of these unofficial videos made by fans as they will likely come to dominate the music video scene. More about this in other posts.