How 'Gangnam Style' has earned PSY $8 million
Gangnam Style, of course, has become the viral hit of the year, having spread so fast across the web it’s made a little-known South Korean pop star a bona fide A-lister.
But lift the hood on Gangnam Style and the peripherals are even more amazing.
We know about the views – nearing on 900 million now – but did you know PSY’s goofy clip has already become the most-watched video on all of YouTube?
How it’s done so is through a breakneck pace that’s somehow allowed it to eclipse even the Biebs, and it’s also made PSY a very rich man.
A viral video, in its own way, is kind of like pornography. You know it when you see it.
*Bing: Other stars born on the Internet
And though there is no exact science to what makes a video click, at least we know now that one can pay off.
For the longest time, Justin Bieber’s video for Baby had been YouTube’s greatest hit, racking up some 809 million views since being put up in Feb., 2010. That’s a staggering pace of more than 24 million views per month.
But Gangnam Style has shattered that rate, even at a time when YouTube use was likely flat. Having been online since just mid-July of this year, the video has been viewed at a nauseating rate of 200 million views per month.
Here’s how the song has made PSY, according to this figure, about $8 million:
1) TubeMogul estimates that PSY has cashed in about $870,000 from YouTube ad views on Gangnam Style. From this, we can deduce that he’s made about $1 for every 1,022 or so video views.
2) Gangnam Style has been downloaded 2.7 million times in the U.S. on iTunes. Apple keeps about 30 per cent of all sales, but at $1.29 per pop, that still has net PSY about $2.4 million.
3) From the Gangnam Style hit, PSY has become much in-demand. He’s now the face of Samsung, LG’s mobile carrier Uplus and a few other smaller names. An analyst at Kyobo Securities guesses he’s cashed in about $4.6 million from that this year alone.
PSY has also earned some nominal fees from CD sales, TV appearances and international downloads to round out to $8 million total.
In fact, PSY isn’t quite so new to the stage – before Gangnam Style, he’d released five studio albums in South Korea – but his wealth, however, may just be newfound.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
*AllThingsD.com photo
Comments