YouTube Music Awards: Lady Gaga gives 'strange' performance at New York ceremony

The first YTMAs are slated by the industry press

Lady Gaga attends the YouTube Music Awards in New York (Getty Images)

The first YouTube Music Awards has been slated for descending into chaos.

Despite 60 million people voting for who they thought should win, a peak of just 215,000 people tuned in to the live-streamed show, according to the LA Times.

When Lady Gaga gave a tearful performance of her new song "Dope" – attacked by the newspaper for being "deeply strange and out-of-tune" – more than 4,000 viewers left the stream.

The singer arrived at the ceremony in New York wearing a set of false, decaying teeth, dark sunglasses and her trademark platform boots.

But Gaga lost out to South Korean band Girls Generation in the Video of the Year category.

The aim of the show, which boasted Spike Jonze as creative director, was to recreate the spontaneous and carefree spirit of the videos people post online.

But Variety said the ceremony "wasn't broadcast-quality in any sense", adding: "It was marred by video and sound snafus and the show's hosts looked adrift as they tried to wing it without scripts."

The MTV VMAs needn't worry, it seems, as "nothing very interesting happened".

Actor Jason Schwartzman, who hosted the show with Reggie Watts, said: "I cannot reiterate how we had no idea what was going to happen, ever. All we had on the cards were the next award."

Among the winners was Eminem, who took home Artist of the Year. Taylor Swift won YouTube phenomenon for her "I Knew You Were Trouble" track, while Macklemore and Ryan Lewis nabbed YouTube breakthrough.