“Gangnam Style,” the K-pop single made by the South Korean artist PSY, has just reached one billion views. Sorry Charlie, you’ll have to bite more fingers to surpass this record. The feat follows after the video made its way into the Guinness World Record for the most number of YouTube likes – approximately 6,098,012 likes as of this writing. Expect the numbers to grow in the coming days.
It’s important to note that PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is only a single. And yet, people around the world ate the song like crazy, not to mention the wacky horse dancing. Google says that the video is being watched around seven to ten million times per day.
“I’ve seen a statistic which reckons the one song will have generated something like $8m [£5m] 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,” said Chris Cooke, the Business Editor of the CMU music news site. “It shows that YouTube – which is a free-to-use as a promotional platform for the music labels – can lead to substantial income.”
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