Google doesn’t release financial figures for YouTube, but others have tracked its performance as closely as possible from outside. The Wall Street Journal reports that video tracking service TubeMogul has been monitoring the monetization of the most popular videos. TubeMogul categorized the top 100 most-viewed videos into the following 4 categories:

There’s an interesting new book called Dot.Cloud: The 21^st Century Business Platform that describes the implications of cloud computing to businesses. Cloud computing can be described in many ways, but a simple definition is working and storing information on the Internet itself, rather than on local networks or individual computers. For example, using services like Google documents or Zoho to create and store documents, spreadsheets and presentations is a perfect example of Cloud Computing.

Check out the Pollack New Music Preview for September 2009, featuring:

• AFI
• 3Oh!3
• Lady Antebellum
• Jason DeRulo
• Weezer
• And more!

To see the full preview, click here.

Symantec, makers of the popular Norton Anti Virus and Internet Security software, among others, recently released a list of the top 100 search terms for kids. They tracked 3.5 million searches between February and July of this year by users of the OnlineFamily.Norton service. You Tube has clearly become a major destination as 3 of the top 12 terms were variations of the name “YouTube” and #9 on the list was for a popular character on a kid-friendly YouTube channel. Here are the top 10 search terms:

The big hype in music these days comes from Europe.  Spotify, has over 2 million users in the UK, as well as numerous fans in Sweden and Germany.  It’s not yet available in the US, but the thinking is that it will launch in North America in early 2010.  European users sing the praises of Spotify’s interface and its catalog of music.  Users listen through an application on their computer, not through their web browser.  The service is ad-supported for those who want to use the free version; the premium subscription service is ad free.

Gaming sales were down dramatically in June, dropping 31% from May, according to NPD Group. This is the 4^th consecutive monthly decline in the industry, which is off 12% for the year. The drops are across the board, with hardware, software and peripherals all suffering. The only hardware console to show an increase in June was Microsoft’s Xbox 360, which rose slightly, while Nintendo’s Wii dropped by 45% and Sony’s PSP3 fell 59%. The interesting thing will be seeing if big product launches like “Beatles Rock Band” or Sony’s upcoming PSP3 Slim will reverse the trend. 

To read the full "Tech Trends" from 8/17/09, click here.

Goldman Sachs predicts that Apple’s iPhone App store and Amazon’s Kindle e-book store will each generate more revenue that YouTube this year, despite the fact that YouTube has millions more users.  The Sachs analysis projects that by 2010 Apple will have 4 times the gross revenue of YouTube and that the Kindle store will be 50% above YouTube.  The analysis also predicts that this year Apple’s net revenue will surpass YouTube’s gross.

Pollack New Music Preview for August 2009 featuring:

• Beastie Boys
• Muse
• Paramore
• Dierks Bentley
• Shakira
• And More!

To see the full list, click here.

MTV announced their nominations for the 2009 Video Music Awards earlier this week, with the most nods going to Lady Gaga and Beyonce. The show will air on Sunday, September 13th, with confirmed perfomances from Taylor Swift, Green Day, Muse, and P!nk.

For the full list of nominations, click here.

The last few years may have been disastrous for the record companies, but that hasn’t prevented an exponential increase in the number of new album releases each year. According to Nielsen’s Soundscan numbers, there were 105,000 new releases in 2008 in the US. That’s 4 times as many as were released at the beginning of the decade. Of those, just 6,000 sold 1,000 or more copies. That’s just 5.7% of all new releases.