Music industry fakes billions of YouTube views

The Internet has given us many great things, such as the ability to take fraud to entirely new levels. Well, the music industry isn’t blind to this fact. YouTube recently discovered the big three, Universal, Sony/BMG and RCA, have been adding false video views to their particular artists’ videos.
 
That’s right. Anyone who used YouTube music video views as a metric for how well certain artists are doing (i.e. no one, hopefully), should pay heed to the following numbers.
 
Sony/BMG dropped from 850 million views to 2.3 million. RCA went from 159 million to 120 million, while Universal lost more than 1 billion views, coming to rest at just under 6 billion.
 
These numbers are particularly striking, mostly for Sony’s incredibly bloated numbers. While Universal lost more, it was at least faking in the general playing field of how many hits it actually received. Sony, on the other hand, created a completely mythical popularity.
 
The companies were reportedly using view building services (of which there are many), such as Fiverr and YouLikeHits.
 
Nothing more will probably happen to these companies other than a short period of possible embarrassment. Nonetheless, not the most stellar way to do business.