Everyone has heard of Psy’s hit Gangnam Style. Whether you hate it or you love it, you pressed play at least once to see it on YouTube. In a world where real music mattered, Gangnam Style wouldn’t have broken YouTube views record, but we don’t live in that kind of world, so Psy’s hit Gangnam Style did break the YouTube views record.
The South Korean musician has succeeded to exceed the maximum number of views on YouTube and YouTube had to upgrade its system because it couldn’t count anymore.
Gangnam Style has reached a total number of 2,147,483,64t views and YouTube had to change its counter because it couldn’t register any numbers higher than that.
So YouTube had to upgrade its system for a maximum of 32 bit integer.
The system stores each view count as someone click play and bigger numbers take up more space memory. The maximum YouTube could store was 2,147,483,647, a record broken by Gangnam Style.
The new YouTube upgrade allows the users to see a video for more than nine quintillion times. Never heard of quintillion? It’s what comes after a billion, a trillion and a quadrillion. YouTube said that one can watch a video for 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 times.
YouTube posted on Google+ saying:
“We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer.”
So Psy can rest assured, his Gangnam Style video can still be seen on YouTube and break a few more records.
South Korean musician released his single Gangnam Style in July 2012. The song was taken off his sixth album and went straight to number 1 on South Korean music chart Gaon Chart. By December 21, 2012 became the most visualized YouTube video ever. It was the first video to reach one billion views. No other video has gained so much popularity on the internet, not even a Justin Bieber video or a Kim Kardashian gossip.