Gangnam Style hits 1 bn YouTube mark

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Psy hailed his ascent to “Billion Style” on Saturday, after the South Korean rapper’s viral hit became the first video to break a billion views on YouTube, marking a historic milestone on the Internet. The view counter for Gangnam Style, which was only posted on the video-sharing site July 15, clicked over into 10 figures at around 3.50 GMT on Friday, amid an ongoing global craze for the singer and his horse-riding dance. As of 3.15 GMT on Saturday the counter showed 1,008,286,535 views. “Finally becoming #BillionStyle!!!” Psy wrote on Twitter.
Among the first to congratulate him was American rapper MC Hammer, of 1990s “U Can’t Touch This” fame, who posted: “Congratulations !!! You made history !!! 1 Billion Views !!!!”
Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager, attributed Psy’s success “to the universal appeal of catchy music — and er, great equine dance moves”.
Psy has swept all before him in the past five months, hovering up awards and scoring guest appearances with everyone from Madonna to the head of the UN. The video and its singer have been given walk-on roles at major world events like the US presidential election. And the timing of the one-billion views breakthrough dovetailed with a viral social network hoax that had the 16th century French seer Nostradamus apparently referencing Psy as a harbinger of the December 21 apocalypse.
Billboard.com said Gangnam was estimated to have generated $2,000,000 from YouTube alone at a reported rate of two dollars for every 1,000 views, with digital downloads and on-demand services bringing earnings from the song to $6.01 million in just five months. It also earned Psy a contract with Justin Bieber’s management agency and a number of assessments and projections have been posted claiming the song has generated over $8.1 million in advertising deals.
The one billion milestone comes less than a month after the video took the all-time most-viewed title away from Canadian heartthrob Bieber, with his song Baby still in second place on Saturday with more than 813 million views.
Rolling Stone put Gangnam Style at number 25 on its top 50 list of best songs for 2012 and labelled Psy as “Seoul Brother Number One”.
Psy plans to wrap up the year with an appearance on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” on ABC in New York, his agency said.