YouTube is planning to launch its own version of the MTV Video Music Awards and it’s doing it Gangnam Style.
The Google-owned platform is hosting a live streaming music awards event on Sunday, Nov. 3, in New York.
The first-ever YouTube Music Awards will come together at Pier 36, a venue overlooking the East River, and will be hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman and feature guests Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire and Eminem.
The company said the awards will feature some of the biggest YouTube music stars, including violin player Lindsey Stirling and music school collective CDZA.
The company said nothing about its biggest star, Psy, who garnered 1.78 billion views for his “Gangnam Style” video, which debuted in July 2012.
Vice and Sunset Lane Entertainment will be executive producing the show, which will feature elements from around the world.
What isn’t clear is the extent of the involvement of record labels, which typically pay production costs for the sets played by their artists, or whether YouTube will sell the license for the show to any TV outlet.
The event is no doubt focused on helping YouTube create some must-see TV.
YouTube’s traffic, while huge, is rarely focused on mass appointment viewing — the kind that advertisers love to be attached to.
The executives at YouTube surely noticed how much interest Miley Cyrus’ twerking at MTV’s VMAs attracted in August. The VMAs drew 10 million viewers and generated 300,000 tweets per minute.
YouTube’s awards will honor videos that its customers watched and shared over the past year.