Baby Shark breaks through YouTube’s biggest milestone to amass 10 billion views
The viral dance had already set a Guinness World Record two years ago as the most viewed video on YouTube
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The ‘Baby Shark Dance’ music video has become the first YouTube video to reach 10 billion views on the platform.
The record was reached on Thursday, with 10,002,858,093 views at time of writing.
Baby Shark Dance had already set a Guinness World Record as the most viewed video on YouTube in November 2020, when it had received seven billion views. It ranked number 32 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and number 6 in the British Official Charts in 2019.
The previous record-holder was Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito”, but Baby Shark Dance surpassed it by over two billion views. It has been the most-viewed video on YouTube for the past 15 months.
The video is produced by Pinkfong, a children’s education brand from South Korean company SmartStudy. They have developed over 4,000 children’s videos, songs, games, and apps to date.
It was first released in November 2015 and went viral across south east Asia. The dance has since spawned an animated TV series on Nickelodeon, live tours, and NFTs.
Its popularity grew through the ‘baby shark challenge’, which encouraged people to film themselves performing the moves of the dance.
In 2018, there were 88,000 Instagram posts tagged with the hashtag #babysharkchallenge.
“It has been a truly meaningful journey to witness how Baby Shark has connected people around the world and we can’t wait to introduce Baby Shark’s further adventures that will bring unparalleled experiences to even more fans everywhere,” Pinkfong chief executive Min-seok Kim said.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments