It's official: Psy's "Gangnam Style" is the first video ever to hit a billion views on YouTube.
For most mortals on video sharing networks, hitting the 1 million views milestone is a feat. For Psy's dance hymn, which was uploaded to YouTube on July 15, millions of views are racking up every hour. It took approximately three hours for the video to go from 995 million to a billion.
An animated dancing Psy now appears next to the video's view counter:
"Psy's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music -- and er, great equine dance moves," Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager, said in a blog post. "In the past, music distribution was mostly regional. It was more difficult to learn about great artists from around the world. But with a global platform at their fingertips, people are now discovering and sharing amazing music from all over the planet."
Some love the song, some hate it, and, by now, many are sick of it. But it captured the essence of pop in the YouTube era: It blended the perfect combination of weirdness, virality, dance moves and catchy melody, and that made it one of the most popular pieces of entertainment in recent times.
