‘Gangnam Style’ Breaks YouTube: Music Video Viewed More Than Limit

By Steven Hogg - 04 Dec '14 09:56AM

When news of "Gangnam Style" - the quirky song by South Korean artist Psy - being the most watched video on YouTube broke, we weren't surprised. But who knew it could even go on to break YouTube's view limit!

YouTube explained in a blog:

"We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY. "Gangnam Style" has been viewed so many times we had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer (9,223,372,036,854,775,808)!"

Put simply, when YouTube was built nine years ago, the developers restricted the maximum view numbers to 2 billion. But Psy's "Gangnam Style" broke that record and the developers had to maximize the view count up to 9 quintillion. They hope that can contain Psy's video views for at least some time.

"Gangnam Style" is almost two and a half years old now and the craze for that video just doesn't seem to die down. The video was the first YouTube clip to ever cross a billion views and now it has broken YouTube's number limit as well.

Now if you hovered over the video's hits counter, you can see the numbers flipping like a casino roll and arriving at the current number of views. The new figures will only propel "Gangnam Style" to a new level giving it added publicity.

Even YouTube developers were surprised that "Gangnam Style" exceeded their view counter.

"People still play this video an absurd number of times," Google spokesman Matt McLernon was quoted by CNN.