Did you tune into YouTube on Sunday to catch U2 performing live form the Rose Bowl? If you did, you had some serious virtual company.

The LA Times reports that Sunday’s show generated 10 million streams across 7 continents. The whole show was archived on YouTube Monday and has been viewed more than 1 million times since then.

YouTube is calling the U2 concert the largest event in the company’s history and it very well could be a glimpse into what the Google -owned service plans in the future. After all, it’s hard to make money off of short-form content, but with live streams, YouTube could potentially capitalize and maybe even come up with a payment model (a la Pay-Per-View) for really big events.

I think this was an ambitious experiment that certainly seemed to work, at least for U2. I could see myself paying for a live concert or event on a streaming video site, I’m just not sure that site should be YouTube.

For a site that has been free-with-advertising for so long, I’m just not sure if a pay-per-view model will necessarily work with the brand that has been established for the site. Take the example of YouTube’s fairly recent expansion into movies and TV Shows. Despite the rather limited offering, I’m not sure how big of a dent it has actually made in Hulu’s market share for free, full length video.

Perhaps there is room for a new online video competitor dedicated to pay-per-view streaming broadcasts of live concerts and events. Thoughts?