Korean singer PSY's hit received over 2.5 billion views.
Records viewers don’t even know about are being smashed every day. Gangnam Style, the catchy song with a surreal but mesmerizing video from Korean singer PSY, has broken the YouTube view counter.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, shared a post on Monday December 1 that read, “We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer…but then we met PSY.” A 32-bit integer, which was the mathematical unit used to represent data on YouTube for years, limited the number of countable views to 2, 147, 483, 647, ie, 2 billion. Gangnam Style, however, has surpassed that seemingly unfathomable number.
BBC News reports that Google engineers saw the number approaching and prepared a new updated system to handle the numbers. YouTube’s counters now use a 64-bit integer, which will allow it to count up to the rather unheard-of quintillions. To be precise, Gangnam Style will have to receive 9, 223, 372, 036, 854,775, 808 views to repeat its feat and require a new integer and counter.
The next highest-viewed video, Justin Bieber’s song Baby, is easily a billion views behind Gangnam Style.
PSY’s creative team shared the news on his social media page but he has yet to comment specifically on the occasion.
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