Gangnam Style reaches 1 Billion Views
Today is a major day for the internet. But more specifically, YouTube. But even more fastidiously than that, PSY’s Gangnam Style. As of today, music artist PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video has reached a milestone of 1 billion views on YouTube.
Gangnam Style’s insane viral growth really caught wind back in September when it reached 350 million views in 60 days — surpassing Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call me Maybe as the number one viral video of all time (at that time). Only a few months later, PSY was able to take down Justin Bieber’s “Baby” music video to become the most viewed of all time on YouTube.
..And now, it’s the first video to hit a billion views on YouTube. Needless to say, a big Congrats goes out to the folks who made this production possible, we’ll see who makes the next BILLION views.
I know I’ve heard it more than enough times, but have you?
Here’s some stats from YouTube’s blog.
One billion views is an incredible number, but the PSY-nomenon goes beyond that. Check out these stats:
- PSY was already big in Korea, but in 2012, he became a global celeb as Gangnam Style quickly spread from Seoul and the pacific to North America, South America, and Europe. It’s been seen at least 1 million times in close to 75 countries, making it one of the most global music sensations ever!
- From a one-thousand person flash mob in Jakarta to cover videos from Ai Weiwei and Mitt Romney, hundreds of thousands of parodies have been uploaded to YouTube, some of which have tens of millions of views. In fact, fan tributes to Gangnam Style are now being viewed 20 million times every single day.
- PSY’s own remix with Hyuna has 200 million views alone.
- “Gangnam Style” was YouTube’s top rising search of 2012 and on October 6th, we saw more than five million searches for “gangnam style” in a single day. Check out this video demonstrating some of our most popular YouTube searches this year.
- For those interested in the business side: a number of assessments and projections have been posted claiming “Gangnam Style” has generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals, hit more than 2.9 million in song downloads since July, and achieved other incredible feats!
- Since late last month, people have clicked to buy the track on iTunes over 600,000 times helping make PSY the first Korean artist ever to rank #1 on the U.S. iTunes chart and #1 in over 30 more countries.
Perhaps what’s most impressive about this feat is that it took just over five months to happen. To give this milestone some context, here’s a chart of Gangnam Style’s rise to popularity versus Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” the video that previously held the most-watched video title:
Kevin is an Online and Mobile Marketing Strategist who has worked with companies of all sizes over the last 6 years. You can follow Kevin on any of the social platforms below.
