Three major record companies SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and RCA records have been caught by the youtube police for using view generating bots. Last week, YouTube's parent company Google retracted upwards of 2 billion views from videos published by UMG, Sony/BMG and RCA. These views are believed to be the product of "black hat" view count-building techniques, in which third-party companies inflate the total view tallies as a means to manipulate a video's popularity and its increase exposure on YouTube.

The biggest offender of the three record houses was Universal Music Group, who was stripped of over a billion views out of its total 7 billion hits. Sony/BMG and RCA were hardly spared either, with the two companies losing 850 million and 159 million views, respectively.

However Sony has been hit the hardest with 850 million of their views being reduced to only 2.3 million in total of all their music videos on the website. The thing that i think is bad about this whole situation is that these three companies complain about pirated downloading their content for free but yet here they are paying indian programmers to make bot programs to make their vids appear like they get more views so more people will click on it.

Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/youtube-cracks-down-on-fake-video-views-sony-and-umg-lose-billions-of-views/18499.html

"However Sony has been hit the hardest with 850 million of their views being reduced to only 2.3 million in total of all their music videos on the website."

What? That's gotta be a typo.

No its not from what i read from the source and many other sites reporting the news. I checked their music video channel and almost everything was removed. They only had 3 videos of some unknown guy looking like it was captured with a 240p camera.

I would like to add that since UMG is the biggest culprit here that should be in the title. Why are you singling out Sony/BMG? It's not hard to see what your agenda is...

Agree with VEVO channels are filled with bots and youtube does nothing. There are also a lot of uploaders that buy views and subs and youtube does nothing about that.

This is nothing new with Sony. They have been playing dirty tricks with fake reviews in the past and have admitted to it and paying fines in multiple countries.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4741259.stm

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-03-15/entertainment/0203150387_1_ridgefield-press-fake-food-critic

That's the reason I take Sony movies, musics and games reviews with a grain of salt.

UMG had the most taken away at 1 billion out of it's 7 billion total, but the largest impact was against Sony BMG from 850 million down to 2.3 million. Sony was hit hardest it seems, so having them in the title makes the most sense.

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/oct/19/business/fi-payplay19

"The lawsuit by TSR Records, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, builds its case on Sony BMG's "pay for play" civil settlement in July with New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. The company paid a $10-million fine and admitted that some employees used improper promotion practices. Among the allegations: Sony BMG employees gave plasma-screen TVs and provided travel to radio programmers."

Nothing new.. Only Sony music business practices.

I already explained UMG are the biggest culprits but lets not sugarcoat that Sony has not been hit the hardest. 850 million reduced to 2.3 million? Also i did put Sony as the title cause more people would click to read news on this website. Im not sure if youre trying to make me feel bad for being creative in reporting what these companies did that was definately wrong.