--- title: Gangnam Style Got More Views Than YouTube Was Prepared to Handle description: The viral K-Pop hit surpassed 2 billion views, prompting the site to expand its counter to over 9 quintillion canonical: https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/ author: Rishi Iyengar article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-05T04:57:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T22:24:09.000Z og:title: 'Gangnam Style' Breaks YouTube Limits og:description: The video crossed the 2 billion view-limit that YouTube designers built. og:url: https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 'Gangnam Style' Breaks YouTube Limits twitter:description: The video crossed the 2 billion view-limit that YouTube designers built. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 'Gangnam Style' Has Had So Many Views That It Broke YouTube by [Rishi Iyengar](https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/) ## Rishi Iyengar Updated: Dec 13, 2023 10:24 PM UTCPublished: Dec 5, 2014 4:57 AM UTC by [Rishi Iyengar](https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/) ## Rishi Iyengar Updated: Dec 13, 2023 10:24 PM UTCPublished: Dec 5, 2014 4:57 AM UTC **Update appended** Remember “Gangnam Style,” the viral music video by Korean pop star Psy that took the world by storm two years ago? Well, it just [hit more views](https://plus.google.com/+youtube/posts/BUXfdWqu86Q) on YouTube this week than the site’s creators thought a single video would ever get. The video has now been watched more than 2.15 billion times (2,156,711,995 times as of this writing), prompting YouTube to announce that it will increase its maximum viewing limit to more than 9 quintillion. “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,” the video-streaming website said in a statement on Monday, explaining that the computer data units it uses to count views of its videos have now been doubled to a 64-bit integer. **UPDATE:** YouTube said Friday morning that its statement was [intended as a joke](http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/no-psys-gangnam-style-did-not-break-youtube-video-counter-1201371888/), _Variety_ reports. “It’s an easter egg,” a representative said. “We updated the counter to 64-bit months ago.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/"},"headline":"'Gangnam Style' Has Had So Many Views That It Broke YouTube","datePublished":"2014-12-05T04:57:02.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-13T22:24:09.000Z","description":"The viral K-Pop hit surpassed 2 billion views, prompting the site to expand its counter to over 9 quintillion","url":"https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","YouTube","Music Video"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rishi Iyengar","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/rishi-iyengar/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3619615/gangnam-style-youtube-2/","name":"'Gangnam Style' Has Had So Many Views That It Broke YouTube"}}]}] ```