MUMBAI: A big spring clean by YouTube has led to billions of views being wiped out from music videos. Recording companies like Sony and Universal Music Group has lost nearly 2 billion views in a single day.

There are allegations that the crackdown by YouTube is on 'fake' video views.

In a statement, YouTube officials announced, "This was not a bug or security breach. This was an enforcement of our view-count policy."

Speaking to Radioandmusic.com, a senior label executive said, “The answer comes in the second way that YouTube changed its view count. The company recently decided to remove view counts for videos that are no longer live on the channel, or so-called 'dead videos'. For Universal and Sony, that meant thousands of music videos that over the past three years slowly have migrated to the VEVO channel, which is jointly owned by the two companies.”

The videos of Universal and Sony that were in YouTube have been relocated to Vevo and the views received during their time on the dedicated label channels were taken away in YouTube's latest 'clean-up' effort.

He added, “Views have happened; they weren't 'fake' or even double counted when they went on to Vevo. But because the videos are no longer on the channel, YouTube considers them 'dead videos'. They still live on in YouTube, just under a different channel."

In a strategic move, Universal, Sony and EMI in December 2009 jointly put their music videos in VEVO so as to command better advertising rates as well as grow viewership.