It's been ten years of Gangnam style, does it ring a bell? The funny horse dance that in 2012 did more than encourage us to get out on the dance floors and lose our embarrassment: it put South Korea in the spotlight. Specifically, the Gangnam neighborhood, one of the highest standing in Seoul and which gives its name to the famous theme. At the time, it was even forced to create a department for the promotion of tourism due to the boom in visitors for this topic that crossed borders.
The star of this sensation was none other than rapper Park Jae-sang, better known as PSY, known for his slicked-back slicked-back hair and comical dance style. His intention was not precisely to promote the neighborhood in which he had grown up, quite the contrary, because he wanted to make a satire on the life of the new rich Koreans.
For this unlikely star, whose first album landed him a fine and his second was banned for audiences under the age of eighteen, the fame and recognition he had been seeking for so long came unexpectedly when he turned 34. And not exclusively for her musical proposal, but for becoming an Internet phenomenon. In fact, it was thanks to the emerging social networks that the South Korean ended up becoming a phenomenon.
Let's focus on the data. If there is a milestone that only PSY and her Gangnam style have reached, it is none other than having remained at number one on YouTube for more days than any other song. It is not the only record that she has broken in this crazy journey. In mid-2014, the theme continued to sound like a novelty. So much so that it reached (now doubles) 2,147,483,647 views. From this figure, YouTube had to make a decision: expand the counter and update it.
These figures, never seen before, were unbeatable until 2017, when Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa triumphed with their See you again, which was part of the Fast and Furious 7 soundtrack as a tribute to Paul Walker, one of the protagonists of the saga died in a traffic accident before finishing the recording. That same summer, Luis Fonsi unseated the two artists with his Despacito and led the ranking. Then, only one children's song has managed to unseat them all: Baby Shark, by Pinkfong.
Gangnam style marked a before and after on this scale, which Justin Bieber timidly began with the Baby that launched him to stardom. Few anticipated the speed of the rapper's success and how he would help usher in the streaming revolution. And it is that from his great success and the figures that corroborated it, the impact and influence of YouTube on music was demonstrated. Thus, the marketing manuals were expanded because a new way of promoting musical artists was born (or rather settled down), that of online advertising through videos on this and other networks, which went beyond their new compositions and interpretations.
