South Korean rapper Psy’s “Gangnam Style” has become the most-viewed video on Google Inc.’s YouTube website of all time, surpassing Justin Bieber’s “Baby.”
The video, which contains satirical lyrics about the habits of wealthy South Koreans and features choreography mimicking horse riding, reached 805 million views on Nov. 24, while “Baby” had 803 million views, YouTube said in a posting on its Trends blog.
“Gangnam Style and PSY, respectively, have been the top rising searches on YouTube over the past six months,” YouTube noted. “And these searches are coming from all over the world.
“Searches first spiked in South Korea in late July when the video was posted. We began to see search interest rise in the U.S. and other English-speaking nations over the next month until it began to peak in September in North America and Brazil. “Gangnam Style” searches and viewing began to spike more broadly and in places like Europe and India in October.”
The video is watched between 7 and 10 million times a day, the blog said. The hits have now increased to 824 million.
However, Bieber’s YouTube channel remains more popular by a substantial margin.
“PSY’s official channel now has over 1 billion views, a considerable number,” YouTube’s blog noted but added: “Views on Bieber’s VEVO channel alone, however, still total over 3 billion.”
The popularity of the video has vaulted 34-year-old musician Park Jae Sang into fame under the pseudonym Psy, earning the rapper appearances on U.S. television programs including “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and NBC’s “Today Show.”
The West China Metropolis Daily newspaper reported last week that Psy was in talks to appear on state-broadcaster China Central Television’s Spring Festival gala, a variety show broadcast annually on Chinese Lunar New Year eve that is the nation’s most-watched program.
(Bloomberg news contributed to this report.)
