Monday, November 26, 2012

Why "Gagnam Style" Is The Most Viewed Video Of All Time

Psy "Gangnam Style" image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
It was reported over the weekend that Psy's "Gangnam Style" video had surpassed Justin Bieber's "Baby" for the most viewed ever online with over 806 million views. Think of that - 800 million views! There's been a lot of analysis as to why "Gangnam Style" became the video sensation that it is, from humor to explosions to kids to sexy girls to the dance (all true), but I have another take on it from a more macro perspective.
  • There's a bigger online audience: The world is much more connected than any other time in history. As a result, there's a bigger potential audience for a phenomena like "Gangnam Style." You'll see this viewing record broken the next time a similar sensation takes place.
  • He came from a different part of the world: Most huge trends like this tend to start in the US, but in this case, the US was only icing on the cake. With Psy being Korean, "Gangnam Style" broke out from the East and headed West, rather than the other way around. It was already huge by the time North America got hip to it, but what put it over the top was..........
  • Exploitation: The fact that Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber's manager, got involved sent Psy and "Gangnam Style" to another level. All of a sudden, Psy was on every television show you could think of, from Saturday Night Live to the MTV Video Music Awards to the Today show to name just a few. With these appearances, he jumped generations from K-Pop (Korean Pop) to seniors dancing to it at the local rec center. As with most artists, management is still the key.
After another single or two you may never hear from Psy again as he goes the way of the Macerana, but you can be sure that you'll see something like this again probably sooner than later.

By the way, "Gangnam Style" also holds another distinction. It has the most likes of any video with more than 2 million. Beiber's "Baby" comes in 3rd following the 1.6 likes of LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem."
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2 comments:

Jef Knight said...

lol..so, the moral of the story is; make sure a major international music industry mogul promotes your vid and you'll be fine...;)

Cheers

Craig said...

When I first saw the video, I was laughing, singing along and blown away by the production quality of the song and the video.

To me, it's damn near the perfect pop adventure. Shallow, yet deep (when you learn the story about Gangam and its cultural commentary), easy to sing along to, especially since it's in Korean so you don't really have to know the lyrics, has a great silly dance and somehow still ends up cool.

Full credit for being no more and no less than consumable fun. There's an art to making this stuff, despite how many will dismiss it, call it stupid or even worse "easy".

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