Monetizing Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle's Britain's Got Talent video is on track to become the most popular video in the history of YouTube, amassing nearly 100 million views in its first nine days and earning the producers of the program a serendipitous windfall that could already be in the millions.

The YouTube got massive play on U.S. cable television and made the 48-year-old Boyle -- whose performance was a mere first-round audition, after all -- into an international star whose career in an instant seems assured, no matter what the outcome of the British talent show she is the odds-on favorite to win.

As a contestant, Boyle would likely not have a piece of the action -- yet. And it isn't clear what deal Cowell, a judge and producer of the show, and his label, Sony/BMG have with YouTube as part of their revenue-sharing deal. If it's half a cent per play -- a typical figure for such deals -- that would translate into a $500,000 payday so far. And if Google sold a decent amount of video overlays on the video (earning an estimated $20 per thousand views), Cowell and company could be owed millions more in revenue sharing.

The tsunami of interest in a single YouTube clip could not have come at a better time for YouTube, which is aggressively trying to shed its reputation as a repository for mindless clips uploaded by self-absorbed users. It appears to be a platform where Hollywood and advertisers can do serious business, without alienating the millions of people who have made it what it is today.

This might be the perfect storm: A feel-good story that generates a wild amount of traffic and attracts new users precisely as the company doubles down on its reputation as a music destination as well as a nascent TV and studio film portal.

All of this happened in under a week and a half. By comparison, Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" -- YouTube's current reigning champion -- took more than two years to accumulate its tally of 118 million views (and required some gaming of the system by her fans to do so).

Boyle's rendition of  "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables currently has 70 million views on YouTube's first search-result page alone, and multiple estimates have pegged the total number of views at around 100 million and still climbing steeply over the weekend. If YouTube's audio fingerprinting technology works as advertised, Cowell and company will get paid when people watch the user-uploaded videos, in addition to the official version.

Avril's manager suggested last summer that she would earn $2 million from her YouTube video views, as part of the labels' revenue-sharing program (which almost certainly offers more favorable terms than those offered by the standard YouTube Partners program). But despite breakaway successes like Lavigne's and Boyle's, some licensing deals between music copyright holders and Google have broken down over revenue-sharing disagreements -- an indication that the labels see YouTube as an important source of revenue. As a result, Warner's pulled its videos, and all official music videos on YouTube are blocked in Germany and the United Kingdom.

Assuming Boyle continues her run without succumbing to a fan backlash, she'll win the Britain's Got Talent competition's $200K first prize and a possible a recording contract with Cowell. Will she see a piece of this YouTube action? If her lawyer has any sense, he or she will insist that Boyle receive a share of YouTube revenue going forward.

by Eliot Van Buskirk

See Also:

• Avril Lavigne Expects $2 Million From YouTube Despite Gamed Play Count
• Susan Boyle Craze Continues as Past Work Surfaces
• Google, Universal to Launch Music Hub 'Vevo'

Image: Gilberto Viciedo