Many Kpop fans have been fingering their clits over how much YouTube views their favorite groups garner in a stated period of time. For example, every week Soompi has an article or seven about which Twice MV reached a certain milestone for views. Many fans brag about how viewing the MV a lot will benefit their oppas and unnies. Me being an accountant, I will show you why many of these fans are wasting their time.
As you see in the image above, for every 1,000,000 views, a video generates $2,000. YouTube takes a 45% cut, leaving the original content creator with 55% of the total revenue.
So if we divide that $2,000 by 1,000,000 views, and then multiply that number by the 55% the uploader keeps, that's $0.0011 per view. That means you have to watch a video 10 times before the uploader earns ONE FUCKING PENNY.
Now, let's say you want to support your favorite group enough to buy the best Kpop album of 2017. We will ignore shipping and sales tax for this example. This album costs $19.99. You would have to watch a video 18,173 times in order for the uploader to earn the $19.99 that the album is worth. ($19.99 divided by the $0.0011 per view.)
For example, we will use Red Velvet's "Peekaboo" music video. That is 3 minutes and 49 seconds, or in total, 229 seconds. If you multiply 229 times 18,173, then divided by 60 to get to minutes, and then 60 again to get to hours, you end up with 1,156 hours of watching "Peekaboo" for SM to earn the $19.99 that "The Perfect Velvet" album sells for.
Now let's say the fan is at least 16 years old and is old enough to walk down the street to get an entry-level job. The federal minimum wage in the U.S. is $7.25. Payroll taxes are 7.65%, so after payroll taxes are taken out, an entry-level worker in the U.S. makes $6.76 per hour. We ignore income taxes because an entry-level worker does not pay income tax. It is taken out of their paychecks each period, but when they file their return, they get all of it back when they receive their refund. (We could argue that since the taxpayer is effectively loaning their money to the government for free for a year, they are losing money due to the time value of money. However, with interest rates being low, the time period being small, and the small amount of money a 16-year-old makes working part-time, the effect would be negligible.)
So, let's take that $19.99 divided by that $6.76. That is three hours. So there you go kids, you can flip burgers at McDonald's while learning some skills that will help you get a better job after you either graduate from university or find a better job, or you can spazz on Twitter about how you watched an MV 18,173 times to help your oppas and unnies.