Last week, Dua Lipa’s “New Rules” video became the latest video to enter YouTube’s “Billion Views Club,” certifying the clever clip filled with visual trickery and more than its fair share of general fabulousness as a true hit. The British pop singer certainly celebrated reaching 10 digits for the first time, and her recent success highlights both how much she’s developed as an international pop star and how far the video hosting platform has come as well.
“New Rules” was the one-hundredth video to break into the website’s Billion Views Club, and since then, it has been joined by at least one or two more titles. Over 100 titles have now been viewed at least one billion times, and that figure is sure to blossom into 150 and then 200 (and then grow rapidly from there) in no time.
Psy’s “Gangnam Style” notably became the first video to reach one billion streams on YouTube back in December 2012, just a few months after it arrived on the site and went viral almost instantly. At the time, that view count was a huge deal, and both he and his ultra-silly clip were hailed not only as champions of the website, but as a sign that YouTube really was the future of music. Now, reaching one billion plays doesn’t mean what it used to, and in fact, that many views are all but expected when it comes to new offerings from some of the biggest players in the music industry.
In fact, most of the videos included in the Billion Views Club have been released and rocketed to fame between when “Gangnam Style” first moved on from millions to billions and today. The Billion Views Club is now populated primarily by massive hits that have come and gone in the past few years, and two of the three biggest successes were released just last year.
Despite longer windows of availability and immense popularity, there aren’t many older titles on the list of the most-watched visuals. Hits from years past are still watched by millions, but most don't come close to the word "billion," and even the biggest smashes of all-time aren't performing nearly as well on YouTube as those songs that are only a few years old. YouTube is now where millions of people around the world go to listen to the songs they love, and an eye-catching visual typically convinces people to watch and rewatch. It’s a great place to house all the videos from the past, but a quick look at which songs are performing best shows that it’s really all about what’s current and what’s happening now.
A billion views is no longer a newsworthy event most of the time, and these days, it has become all about which artists can collect the most videos with several billion streams, which ones can break records regarding the fastest sprint to a billion and the ever-climbing total number of plays “Despacito” has racked up. Soon, there won’t be much talk of the Billion Views Club, but the Two Billion, or perhaps even Three Billion Views Club will be where the party’s at.
