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.
This 18,173 is for one person's views? Not combined with other people watching the video?
ReplyDeletePer one person.
Delete$6.76 per hour, jesus fucking christ. What a shit wage. And what the fuck is "payroll tax", it's not like the government actually does your payroll for you, unless you work for the government itself your employer does that, so this sounds like "a second income tax" rebranded.
ReplyDeleteOnly in Murica.
DeleteThat pissy 49c the taxman is taking out for "payroll" is like 7% of the damn wage. Nobody earning such a shit wage should have to pay 7% of it to the government. No wonder so many Americans just say "fuck it" and deal drugs for a living.
DeletePayroll taxes are taken out for Social Security and Medicare. The working people pay for the social welfare of the retired and disabled. On top of the 7.65% the employee pays, the employers matches that for each individual. As you make more money like me, you see about 1/3 of your pay going to taxes and it pisses me off.
DeleteThe minimum wage isn't supposed to be a living wage in America, btw. It's mainly for students who are working their first job or for dumbasses who wasted their whole lives not attaining any skills to allow them to get a better job.
DeleteIf it's not supposed to be a living wage, it makes total sense that people can't live on it and do crime instead.
DeleteI mean, it is easier to sell drugs and murder people than to buckle down and learn calculus, physics, etc. haha.
DeleteYes but how many university educated people can be employed in their field in the US. And it's not like those are the only jobs that need doing either. Someone has to collect your trash for example.
DeleteThere are a lot of vocations that either involve on-the-job training or an apprenticeship model for many of the trades that make good money, but many people won't due. I didn't find a good job with my first degree, so I went back for something related and more practical, but if I hadn't done that, I would have gotten a trade job such as a plumber because they make good money. There are good jobs out there that make a lot of money, but people refuse to do them.
DeleteIn society there's always going to be that "fuckknuckle" segment of the population who a. can't get work/don't want to work and b. if you were a boss you really wouldn't want them working for you anyway because they'll just fuck everything up. There's not many jobs left these days for people like that who are good for not much except pushing a broom in front of them, and there'll be even less in the future as automation and AI take more and more jobs. Those people still need to be able to live somehow though, otherwise they just cause huge problems for everybody else. Having a reasonable plan for people like that so they can actually live without shitting up everything around them is important and is going to become even more important.
DeleteAs automation and AI continue to take over more and more jobs and render most degrees useless, I think the most likely probability is that welfare, etc. is replaced by a BIG (Basic Income Guarantee) for the entire population. Some amount that it allows for everyone to live a comfortable equivalent to a modern middle class-ish lifestyle, but not enough so that it motivates qualified (ie. those whose fields and expertises that have not been rendered completely useless) people to still find available jobs to be able to afford luxury items and an equivalent lifestyle. This probably won’t happen anytime in the immediate future, but I can see it starting maybe 25 - 50 years from now. I’m just hoping the day we can upload consciousness into a computer/the cloud comes in my lifetime... virtual immortality. At this point, it seems like an inevitability.
Delete@Rin; I know a guy that'd say "sounds like a bunch of commie gobbily gook" to that!
DeleteStar Trek is a great utopia, though.
Actually it's not just a "commie" thing or whatever, many very "capitalist" countries are talking the BIG, simply because it actually works out cheaper in most cases to pay the entire population of adults a basic wage than it does to have a convoluted welfare system that requires thousands of staff and complicated criteria, eligibility checks and administration. Many people on welfare on the other hand are actually AGAINST the idea because they would just receive one simple sum per adult as opposed to extra money for pumping out extra kids etc, it's actually a pay cut for many of them.
DeleteBut how am I supposed to fap to unnir without youtube videos?
ReplyDelete"Many fans brag about how viewing the MV a lot will benefit their oppas and unnies."
ReplyDelete- Most MVs aren't even properly monetized.
This is very true, the monetization on YouTube sucks now. I'm glad I never became a v-log reactor or whatever the fuck.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBecause I don't care.
Delete