With 38 million views in a day, Psy breaks more records with ‘Gentleman’

It seems Psy is not quite finished with his quest to break YouTube. While anything that followed ‘Gangnam Style’ — the first YouTube video to amass 1-billion views — was bound to get some attention, the South Korean popstar’s latest video for ‘Gentleman’ is racking up some records of its own.

Analytics services have been speculating about the success of Psy’s new video for a while, with some suggesting it holds a joint first place with footage of the Russian meteor landing for the title of ‘fastest video to hit 100-million views on YouTube’, hitting the milestone in just three days. But now YouTube itself has weighed in with some figures that show just how quickly ‘Gentleman’ is collecting those views.

According to the video sharing site, ‘Gentleman’ set the record for the most views ever in a single day, clocking 38-million views on 14 April, a day after the video was released. It also débuted at number one on YouTube’s music chart, bumping Psy’s previous single down to second spot.

While 38-million views doesn’t sound like much compared to the 1.5-billion views ‘Gangnam Style’ has so far, YouTube’s statistics show that the new video is gaining ground much quicker than its predecessor. It took just four days for ‘Gentleman’ to pass 100-million views — a feat that took ‘Gangnam Style’ almost two months to achieve.

The previous record holder for the most views in a single day on YouTube was the controversial film ‘Kony 2012’, which amassed 31-million views on 7 March last year.

While ‘Gentleman’ has since gone on to pass the 200-million views mark in just over a week since its release, YouTube’s data suggests that it may have already passed peak popularity, although it is still continuing to collect a substantial number of views (typically between 10 and 20-million) daily.