U2 + YouTube = 10 million streams

For a band that has its own 3-D film and is performing under a giant spaceship-like contraption on its current tour, an Internet stream may not seem all that fancy. Yet it certainly proved to be a powerful promotional device.

U2's live broadcast Sunday night of the Pasadena stop on its 360 Tour generated 10 million streams across seven continents, according to a YouTube spokesman. What's more, since being archived on YouTube on Monday, the concert has tallied more than 1 million streams.

Information, however, on the average length of time viewers watched the nearly 2 1/2-hour concert was not readily available. YouTube has also not yet broken the numbers out into individual users. 

Now Pop & Hiss is being purely speculative here, but it's probably a safe bet that the latter number was a few million fewer than 10 million, considering the U2 channel on YouTube has generated about 8.4 million views, as of Wednesday evening.

Nevertheless, there's no doubting U2's live draw, both online and in the flesh. The Rose Bowl concert had a crowd of more than 100,000 people, including Rose Bowl staff. The stream was also the largest event in YouTube's history, according to a statement from the company. 

Liked what you saw and missed the Rose Bowl concert? U2 will be back in Southern California on June 6, 2010, performing at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Ticket information has not yet been released.

--Todd Martens

Screenshot: YouTube.com

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The masses descend upon Pasadena for U2's Rose Bowl gig

Making the U2 set so big that it's invisible

INTERACTIVE GRAPHIC: U2 360 tour: Stadium in the round

Comments

[G2TheC]

U2 clearly played to U2be and not the Rose Hole crowd. With sales of the new record being kinda ehhh, I can see why they played so much off the new album, to spotlight it to the attending and digital crowds. They didn't phone it in, they webcammed it in.

This was my 13th U2 show. I've seen them at least once during every tour except for Popmart at the Coliseum. Even though I had tremendous (and free) seats in the $250 section, this show ranks a solid 13th. I did go back on Monday and watch parts of the show on YouTube. The experience played better online than in person.

Sunday Boring Sunday, indeed.

[pbremer]

Great Show! Watched in online and throughly enjoyd it. My only 'complaint' is the audio sounded almost mono to me (vs stereo). I could barely make out any bass guitar especialy during my favorite track of this tour 'I'll Go Crazy....' remix. Great, great band. Awe inspiring tour! See it now while you can and witness history!

thanks U2.

Pat

www.u2mart.com
Get Your 360 Tour EA Bono Shades here!

[Chris B]

Considering that still noone gets it that record companies and everyone else out there is using softwares to generate these clicks. I am sure though there are a lot of real ones, but NOT ALL, GUYS!!! Do your homework. Come on! I can get you 1 Million clicks on youtube in 3 days! Of course all of their stuff is great and I love their approach so more power to their elbows, BUT please not about views and clicks, get with it! Its all fake.

[Steve D]

I watched the stream live with my Mac plugged into my 56" TV and home theater - and watched the full 2 1/2 show. I decided not to punt the $2000 going price for tix but will be seeing U2 live in Oakland next year.
I was really impressed by the sound and video quality given this was streaming via Youtube. I was also lucky to record the sound feed and a little tuning up in Audible (an excellent open source tool) has left me with a great addition to my iTunes library:)
I did notice that the two Macs were actually receiving the stream some 45 seconds apart which is probably how Youtube managed to pull off such a feat. I would pay for similar broadcasts - and would like to see them integrated with AppleTV perhaps to save me running those cables.