Youtube in Sweden

Stuttgart Media University

Faculty: Information and Communication

Degree course: Online Media Management

Elective subject: International Media Research

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Bettina Schwarzer

Firstname: Cagla Irem

Lastname: Eyiboglu

Nationality: Turkish

Student number: 30200

E-Mail:caglairem.e@gmail.com

24 January 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.................................31. KINGDOM OF SWEDEN.......................32. THE USE OF INTERNET IN SWEDEN.............4

Internet Sources Chapter I :.............................................6

CHAPTER II................................8THE USE OF YOUTUBE IN SWEDEN.................8OVERVIEW OF TOP 100 YOUTUBE CHANNELS..........9YOUTUBE STARS.............................11PEWDIEPIE................................11AVICIIVEVO...............................12KERALIS..................................12REGULAR ORDINARY SWEDISH MEAL TIME...........12CONCLUSION................................13

Internet Sourcers Chapter II:.........................................14

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Chapter I

1. Kingdom of Sweden Sweden is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the third-largest country in the European Union by area with total population 9.7 milion (Sweden, 2014). Althought, Sweden isEU country currency is Swedish Kronas. Most of the population are living in the urban areas because of the extreme weather conditions and geographical position of Sweden. More than halfof the Sweden comprises forest field. In summersun stays in the sky until the midnight but in contrast in winter it goes down in the middle of the day.Northest part of the Sweden experiencing 6 months day and night. Stockholm

is the capital city with population nearly 2 milion (2014) which covers almost 20% of total population and it is a center of the economy that most companies based on Stockholm. There is a lot of well-known companies originated Sweden. Some of them are Spotify, IKEA, Volvo, Hennes&Mauritz, Electrolux, Koenigsegg, Nordea,Scania, Securitas, Ericsson and Fjallraven. Also Skype is created by Swedes which is owned by Microsoft now. Sweden has the world’s eight highest GDP per capita (Wikipedia, 2015) and ranks highly also as national performance for welfare, including health, social security, education and quality of life. Sweden has a strict environmental policy that tab waters are drinkable and they are creating energy from wastes. Most of the wastes are converted for renewable energy used for heating, electricy etc. Gas emissions and biofuel use also very important that car taxes are differentiated on emissions and public vehicles are using biofuel. The country ranks among the highest for telephone and Internet access penetration.Furthermore, it has the highest proportion of personal computers per capita in Europe, with 500 PC's per 1,000 people (Eupedia, 2013). Majority of Swedes in varying degress understand and speak English. It is because of the popularity of overseas travel, astrong Anglo-American influence, similarities between two languages and the tradition of subtitling rather than dubbing foreign television shows and films.Nowadays, Sweden has

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become culturally diverse country because of large number of immigrants. However, this causes new social challenges and violent incidents which occur frequently. Most common countries of immigrants came from are Finland, former Yugoslavia, Poland, Iraq and Iran. In 2007, with over 800 million dollars in revenue, Sweden was the third largest music exporter in the world and comes after the US and the UK. Moreover, in 2013 Sweden produces the most chart hits per capita in the world (Swedish Music, 2014). ABBA was one of the first internationally well known popular music band from Sweden, with about 370 million records sold and it has great effect on music industry in Sweden. The Cardigans, Roxette, Europe, Ace of Base are also globally known musicians from Sweden. Nowadays Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Eric Prydz, Basshunter, Icona Pop, Tove Lo are famous Swedes who are able to stay in top 10 charts globally.

2. The Use of Internet in Sweden There are 8.7 milion internet users in Swedenwhich is 94% of the total population (WikipediaSweden, 2015) . Sweden has the fourth highest usage rate in the world by its percentage but with the number of users it is ranked as 44th. There are no government restrictions on internet access or reports that the government monitors e-mail or chat rooms. There is only one topic is blocked by dns filtering in Swedenwhich is child pornography. According to The Worldwide Web Foundation

(2012) Sweden is the best in the world as usingweb index. Sweden is most active on the search engine Google. Almost 80% percentages of users are engaging with these internet activities; google search, accesing email, searching for new items and accesing maps. While in the rest of the world Facebook ranked first and Google ranked second in Sweden Google.se is the most visited site and Facebook ranked second.Beyond them comes Youtube and Aftonbladet which is national newspaper. Social networks are also have high user rate that there are 4.4 milion Facebook users.Youtube receives 5.6 milion visitors every month that generates 970 milion page views and Swedes stays on Youtube 28 minutes which is longer than worldwide average of 25 minutes (Mvf Global, 2015). In addition, Wikipedia, Windows Live, Blocket and The PirateBay which is Swedish founded P2P torrent downloading site are also most visited sites bySwedes. With Spotify there has been an increasein the use of music streaming and almost all youth use it. Number of those accesing TV via internet has also increased sharply in years but daily usage is still low.

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Figure 2: Percentage of various age groups who use the internet on occasion and daily.Source: Olle Findahl, 2012

According to Sweden internet statics survey written by Olle Findahl (2012), the greatest increases occurred among children aged 9 to 11.In 2012, half of all 3 years olds and 40 percent of two years olds used the internet. However, there is still 1.2 milion people remain outside the internet that more than 60% of retired over the age of 75 do not use the internet. Internet is not spreading but daily internet use has increased among all age groupsexcept over the age of 45. This could be because of distinction between people who are living in the urban areas and the others livingoutside the city.Althought, internet is very useful and necessary in daily life for those

living in the urban areas but most of the villagers even do not have computers or internet access. Government also encourage citizens to use internet for paperwork. Insteadof using hard copies they preffer digital ones which also helps to preserve environment. In Sweden it is possible to pay bills, check taxes, insurance and apply for university or visa online. Most of the state agencies have smartphone applications and websites where citizens can able to do their daily tasks. Use of smartphones also affected the use of internet that 55% of the Swedes have smartphones (Olle Findahl, 2012) .Otherwise, internet access is also widespread that most ofthe places like libraries, restaurants, cafes and schools have free wireless connection. About 10% of internet users spend more than 50 hours a week online (Olle Findahl, 2012), whichmeans more than 7 hours a day. This applies to all time spent online, at home, work and in other locations.

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Figure 2: Avarege time (hours per week) that men andwomen spend online at home.Source: Olle Findahl, 2012

As it seen in the above figure men are spending more time online than women. 37 percent of the boys aged 12-25 play games dailyin Sweden. Boys are also more interested watching videos online and visiting, posting inopen forums that based on areas of their interests. Girls are mostly interacted with blogging. In conclusion, internet has become key source of entertainment for mostly those under 25 who uses internet daily basis and spend much more time then older users. After the age of 45 the difference between genders disappears and also drops greatly.

Internet Sources Chapter I:

Eupedia (2013): Intresting facts about

Sweden,http://www.eupedia.com/sweden/trivia.shtml

Mvf Global (2015): Lead Generation and Internet Marketing in Sweden,http://www.mvfglobal.com/sweden

Olle Findahl (2012): Sweden internetstatistik, https://www.iis.se/docs/Swedes-and-the-Internet-2012.pdf

Sweden (2014): Ofical Sverige, https://sweden.se/society/sweden-an-overview/

Swedish Music (2014): Quick facts,https://sweden.se/culture-traditions/8-reasons-why-sweden-rocks/

Wikipedia (2015): Sweden, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden

Wikipedia Sweden (2015): Internet in Sweden,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Sweden

Worldwide Web Foundation (2012): Web index,https://thewebindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Web-Index-global-release.pdf

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Chapter II

The Use of Youtube in Sweden

From 22 October 2008 “se.youtube.com” has been serving globally. Youtube has 4 bilion views per day and 25 milion of this views generated by Swedes (2012). Every month 4 milion Swedes visit Youtube and these visitors 48% are female, 52% male and half of these are between 15-34 years (Helen Alfvegren, 2012). In Sweden more than half of the youths (20-45 years) at least once a week visit Youtube. According to Sweden’s Official Internet Statistics report written by Olle Findahl (2014) 82% of the Swedish internet users visit Youtube sometime and 18 percent visiting it daily. Moreover, 99 percent of youngest Swedes between 12-15 years had used Youtube. Youngest children fist activity on the internet is to watch film and video that 94% of 2-3 years who use internet have done it. At eight to nine years of age, half of the children tried to search for odd videos on Youtube in Sweden.

Emergence of tablets and smartphones causes these smallest individuals to become internet users. Especially touchscreens makes it easier for them. Althought, there is various efficientapplications and videos, they also exposed to harmful contents. Unfortunately, internet is spreading through youngest individuals not among adults. According to news written by Axel Anden (2014) who is Swedish Journalist,Youtube isthe largest streaming channel in Sweden with 1.3 milion viewers.According to calculated minutes in Youtube 25% of Swedenwatch webtv through Youtube.Marie Nilsson; M-manager of the Mediavisions said that Youtube alone has total number of viewers’ biggest channels in Sweden like Svt4, Tv4, Mtg and Sbs Discovery (Axel Anden, 2014). No other internet pages/applications as thenumber of users not even close to Youtube. Nowadays, great numbers of advertisementsmove from traditional TV’s to Youtube.More and more advertisers started to adapt pre-video advertising. Even the traditional TV advertising budget moves over to Youtube because of clearance rate and true data about viewership that advertisers can reachdesired target groups. Large companies thatare good at integrating their work digitally like Redbull and Volvo Trucs havea strategy that working with Youtube globally. Also trend toward longer ads

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effects TV where the time is limited and they are much longer than TV format ones. For example, Volvo advertising with Zlatan ‘Made by Sweden’ has achieved great successvia Youtube this year. Other advertising also from Volvo Trucks that Jean Claude VanDamme makes epic split between two trucks. It was very famous advertising in 2013 thatit has a lot of parody videos made by otheryoutubers.

Overview of Top 100 Youtube Channels After analyzing the contents of the top 100 subscribed YouTube channels in Sweden I have determined that they are divided into as regards subscribers and video views. According to subscribers games, music and comedy mostly used contents. It is followed by weird stuff, branded channels, beauty and sports. Moreover, with big distance tv shows, automotive, education, fashion, technology and religious are other contents in top 100 subscribed channels.

24%

19%

17%

12%

7%

6%

5%2%2% 1%1% 1% 1% 1% 1% Subscribers

Games Music Comedy Weird StuffBranded Channel Beauty Sports TutorialsTvshow Education Fashion TechnologyAutomotive Religious Cooking

Figure 3: Categories according to SubscribersSource: Own figure

In contrary to subscribers there are only 4 channels with games content. However, branded channels take over with 47 channels according to video views. In the second row there is music and with big distance it is followed by comedy, games, automotive, beauty, sport, technology, travel, tv shows, fashion and education.

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47%

28%

4%

4%

3%3

%2%

2% 2%2% 2% 1%

Video ViewsBranded Channel MusicGames AutomotiveComedy BeautySport TechnologyTravel Tv ShowsFashion Education

Figure 4: Categories according to video viewsSource: Own figure

One of the reasons for difference between subscribers and video views ranking is that only viewers with account can subscribe channels in Youtube. The other reason is most of the branded channels are more integrated with other social media like facebook and Twitter which allows viewers to watch them in same page. Furthermore, usually these channels are not frequently publishing videos on Youtube. Having continuous contents is a key notion to have a great number of subscribers. Youtubers who have lots of subscribers mostly upload videos regulary like every Sunday or twodays apart.However, some channels can not get attention for all videos but they still have great number of subscribers.In contrast,sometimes people are not interested inall contents that posted but they are just

interested in specific videos generates video views but not subscription. Although, I tried to analyze both video viewsand subscribers according to one website ranking it was unclear and uncertain to get both from same statics. Therefore, in order to analyze most subscribed channels I used “vidstatsx” and to analyze video views I used “socialbakers” statistics. (cf. Statistics, 2015) As it seems in the figures music is accordingto both subscribers and video views ranked in first three content. As I mentioned before Sweden is third largest music exporter in the world and also in 2013 it produced most chart hits per capita in the world. No wonder that music is the one of the most used content in Sweden. There are a lot of large companies based on Sweden and most of them have a Youtube channel.They catch great numbers of video views mostly with advertisings. For example, Volvo Car Sverige is catched great success with XC70’s advertisement in this year. In 2014, “XC70 featZlatan-Made by Sweden” is the most popular video in Sweden (Newsdesk, 2014). According to subscribers games content is ranked first. According to Sweden’s official internet stastistics report 20% of Swedes play games daily (Olle Findahl, 2014). I assumed that Swedes are expert on gaming and spend a lot of time in front of the computer. Swedes teens are constantly intertwined with the new technology and they are creating nice visual

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videos. Most of these channels based on “minecraft” and random ones. Minecraft is couldbe very popular among Swedes. Furthermore, making fun through games is also very popular. Actually, it confused me a lot that it is sometime imposibble to decide if these channels belongs to games or comedy. Someof them describe their channels content as games but it seems more like funny and weird.

Youtube Stars In this part I will give short introduction toYoutube stars in Sweden based on both video views and Subscribers.

PewDiePie The most subscribed user on YouTube is a position that only one user on the website canhold at a time. Over time, ten have been

documented reaching the position. Since 15 August 2013, PewDiePie's channel has been the most subscribed channel on YouTube with 32 million subscribers (Pewdiepie, 2015). His realname is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg and he is 25 years old. As of January 2015, the PewDiePie channel has received over 7.5 billion video views. PewDiePie also began posting weekly vblogs starting from 2 September 2011. In June 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported that PewDiePie earned $4 million in 2013

(Pewdiepie, 2015). He is sharing gaming moment mostly based on horror and action in his channel. He makes funny comments with animations while playing them. He often refers his fans as ‘Bro Army’ that he has won many hearts by giving them an identity and role. He has a contract with Maker Studios Disney but hesaid that he may leave them and launch his own company when his contract expires.

AviciiVevo Tim Bergling, better known with his stage name Avicii is record producer and Dj. Avicii is one of most talented and famous dance and house music maker. He has been nominated twice for a Grammy Award, once for his work on "Sunshine" with David Guetta in 2012 and once for his song "Levels" in 2013. In 2014 he won The World Music award as a best electronic dance artist. (Avicii, 2015) He has 6.4 milion subscribers and 1bilion video views in 2015. Inhis channel only his official music videos published. His channel is under the control of Vevo which is video hosting service. Vevo is sharing advertising revenues with Google and videos are shown through Youtube.

Keralis He has one milion subscribers and ranked as third channel according to subscribers. Unfortunately, there is no source about his real name but according to Wikipeadia he is 33 years old. His channel is in English and it

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contains mostly Minecraft gaming tutorials where he shows how to build apartment or something in game. He also has his own server with more than 70 thousand members where peopleare showing their own ability. He is selling Keralis tshirts on his website. He is most famous Minecraft gamer in Sweden.His wife also has account which called Mrs_Keralis. He shareda video for Christmas with his wife and baby.

Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time The channel is about cooking meals weird and messy way. In videos he throws the powder and openmilk by cutting the bottlestrongly. Actually channelnamed also contains humor that they are cooking not

so regular or ordinary way. Niclas Lundberg is the main character and founder who mostly cooksmeals and Isaac Anklew is other founder of the channel. They also had series on some Swedish television channels and live performances in Sweden. Channel has 946,395 subscribers in Youtube. They also have a website named Spreadshirt where they are selling their own designed t-shirt.

Conclusion After the analyzing Youtube I assumed that people are more likely watching videos away

from real life issues in order to get rid of their stress. They have a great intrest on entertainment contents like comedy and games. As it can be seen Swedes are talented persons on music and humor that they get great attention worldwide. However, nowadays lots of channels based on similar contents in order to get subscribers. Also, contents like games, comedy and weird stuff sometimes fall into repetition that makesthese channels boring for viewers. This affectsgreatly their video views. One issue about Youtube is about gender. Mostof the channels have content which attract mostly men. The reason for that men spent much more time on Youtube and they use it daily. Women are more intrested on blogging, beauty, fashion and music. Swedish youtubers have a lot of subscribers but they have some issues about video views. Branded channels take over video views but in contrast it is not enought to have great numbers of subscribers. It creates major differences in the rankings lists of subscribers and video views that they are containing various channels. Most of the branded channels not even ranked in top 100 subscribers list. Youtube channels get most of the attention from young population. They participate on bothas viewers and youtubers. This situation makes youtube great field for advertisers who want toreach young population. In these days youth arenot getting along with traditional media like

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television and newspaper so Youtube is a good way to reach them. That cause shift on advertising revenues towards Youtube which affects television channels.

Internet Sourcers Chapter II:

Axel Anden (2015): Youtube has 25% of the Swedish Web-TV,http://www.medievarlden.se/nyheter/2014/10/youtube-har-25-procent-av-det-svenska-webb-tv-tittandet

Avicii (2015): Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicii

Helen Alfvegren (2012): Statics on Youtube in Sweden,http:// www.helalf.se/2012/02/23/statistik-om-youtube-i-sverige/

Newsdesk (2014): Most popular video in Sweden,http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/google/pressreleases/zlatan-populaerast-paa-svenska-youtube-2014-1097090

Olle Findahl (2014): Swedes and The internet,http://en.soi2014.se/

PewDiePie (2015): Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PewDiePie Statistics (2015): Subscribers,http://vidstatsx.com/youtube-top-100-most-subscribed-sweden-se-channelsVideo views, http://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/youtube/channels/sweden/

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