Gangnam Style – a dance hit from South Korea is popular, but this popular? The popular video just reached over a billion views on YouTube (News - Alert).
As of shortly after noon on Friday it had been viewed 1,000,382,639 times. No other video has reached that record on YouTube.
The pop video (below) was first posted online in July, featuring Park Jae-sang, better known as Psy.
Google (News - Alert), which owns YouTube, says the video was watched seven million to 10 million times a day on average. The video has been watched at least one million times in almost 75 countries, YouTube added.
It was also parodied worldwide, which no doubt led to more views.
Justin Bieber's music video, “Baby,” was the previous record holder, which lost the top place on Nov. 24.
"Psy's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music – and er, great unique dance moves," Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager, commented in a blog post. “Yup, that’s right, one BILLION views!”
The success of the video also demonstrates that YouTube – which is free for promotional use – “can lead to substantial income,” according to The BBC.
"I've seen a statistic which reckons the one song will have generated something like $8m … by the end of the year from money that comes directly from YouTube through advertising plus download sales, its uses in adverts and TV programs," Chris Cooke, business editor of the CMU music news site, told The BBC.
In considering the number of views, Entertainment Weekly comments “Psy’s number of YouTube views…is approximately one-seventh of the total world population. Of course, that doesn’t mean that many individual people have actually seen the video; no doubt, at least 750 million of those views come from haggard music bloggers embedding the clip countless times into posts like this one.”
Fans are elated. For example, Geoly Hehe commented on YouTube on Friday, “TO INFINITY AND BEYOND.” And Fabian Brito said, “GO TO 1 BILLION COMENTS!!!!!!”
Not everyone is impressed, though.
The Washington Post’s Maura Judkis asked her readers, “You guys aren’t bored of this yet?” She points out that people are simply “rewatching it over and over and over.”