Psy's 'Gentleman' hits 100 million views
Psy and his dancers perform during his concert at the Seoul World Cup Stadium on Saturday. His “Gentleman” musicvideo amassed more than 100 million views only four days after it was released on YouTube. / Korea Times file
New clip sets record for 20 million single-day hits
By Park Si-soo
Psy’s “Gentleman” music video amassed more than 100 million views in only four days on YouTube, far outperforming the 36-year-old singer’s previous smash “Gangnam Style” and creating another viral hit.
The clip, released at 9 p.m. Saturday (KST), surpassed 100 million around 5 a.m. on Wednesday, according to YG Entertainment, Psy’s management agency.
It marks far faster growth in the number of YouTube hits than “Gangnam Style.” It was posted on the video-sharing website on July 15 and passed the 100-million mark on Sept. 4. “Gangnam Style” remains the most-viewed YouTube video with more than 1.5 billion hits.
The new music video already rewrote YouTube’s records for single-day hits on Monday by racking up around 20 million hits in its first 24 hours, destroying the previous record for single-day views of 8 million, set by Canadian singer Justin Bieber’s “Boyfriend” video in May 2012.
According to YouTube data released Tuesday, the majority of people who viewed the “Gentleman” video were in the United States with 3.79 million hits, followed by South Korea (3.57 million), Brazil (1.41 million), Mexico (1 million) and Canada (969,000).
The five other countries in the top 10 were France, Britain, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia.
As the video makes a big splash online, the single’s ranking on iTunes charts rose rapidly after it went on sale online in 119 nations on Friday.
It topped iTunes charts in 42 countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, Indonesia and Taiwan as of early Wednesday.
The video rose to second place in Austria, Canada, Chile and Turkey, and third in India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The video came in seventh in Britain and 13th in the U.S., countries that lead the global pop music market.
Meanwhile, Psy will star in a public TV commercial that will promote Korea as an attractive tourist destination.
The Korean rapper has recently finished shooting a TV commercial series for the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) to lure more foreign tourists to the country as KTO's public relations ambassador, according to YG. The 15-minute commercial will air in 70 countries around the world from early next month.