Baby Shark Becomes YouTube's Most-Watched Video of All Time (bbc.com) 61
Baby Shark, the infuriatingly catchy children's rhyme recorded by South Korean company Pinkfong, has become the most-watched video ever on YouTube. The BBC reports: The song has now been played 7.04 billion times, overtaking the previous record holder Despacito, the Latin pop smash by singer Luis Fonsi. Played back-to-back, that would mean Baby Shark has been streamed continuously for 30,187 years. Pinkfong stands to have made about $5.2 million from YouTube streams alone.
It took four years for Baby Shark to ascend to the top of YouTube's most-played chart, but the song is actually much older than that. It is thought to have originated in U.S. summer camps in the 1970s. One theory says it was invented in 1975, as Steven Spielberg's Jaws became an box office smash around the world. There are a huge number of variations on the basic premise, including one version where a surfer loses an arm to the shark, and another where the protagonist dies. There are also international versions - including the French Bebe Requin and the German Kleiner Hai (Little Shark), which became a minor hit in Europe in 2007. But none of them could match the phenomenal success of Pinkfong's interpretation, which was sung by 10-year-old Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and uploaded to YouTube in 2015.
It took four years for Baby Shark to ascend to the top of YouTube's most-played chart, but the song is actually much older than that. It is thought to have originated in U.S. summer camps in the 1970s. One theory says it was invented in 1975, as Steven Spielberg's Jaws became an box office smash around the world. There are a huge number of variations on the basic premise, including one version where a surfer loses an arm to the shark, and another where the protagonist dies. There are also international versions - including the French Bebe Requin and the German Kleiner Hai (Little Shark), which became a minor hit in Europe in 2007. But none of them could match the phenomenal success of Pinkfong's interpretation, which was sung by 10-year-old Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and uploaded to YouTube in 2015.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
This makes gungnam style sound like the height of musical sophistication.
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Yep. Or What Does the Fox Say? [youtube.com] or The Gummy Bear Song [youtube.com].
*sigh*
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Spongebob Squarepants: "It's opposite day!" I'd say something about rap/hip-hop, but that's too obvious.
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NYT: Jail Employees Face Charges After Using ‘Baby Shark’ Song to Punish Inmates [nytimes.com]
Re: Wow (Score:1)
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It's still better than most the shit currently on the pop radio stations.
Shakes Head (Score:1)
I don't even know what to say. The de-evolution of humanity is complete I guess.
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Re:Shakes Head (Score:4, Funny)
This is an outrage! Why back in my day toddlers were a veritable fount of sonic sophistication! We craved the concerto grosso! Our hearts beat a spiritfull allegro when our delicate ear was treated to Vivaldi and Handel! Doomed, I tell you! Doomed!
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When I was a kid, all I had was Bugs Bunny [cmuse.org] as a role model.
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* font
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So proud...
99 bottles of beer on the wall.... (Score:2)
Annoying, repetitive songs are not new, and some of the really old dittys had their roots in slavery and racism.
Of course, 99 bottles is super mega verboten now because kids might want to become a raging alcoholic (modern day thinking).
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The de-evolution of humanity is complete I guess.
Don't you mean,
it's the end of humanity do do do do do...
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And I feel fine.
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It's worse than you realize (Score:2)
I don't even know what to say. The de-evolution of humanity is complete I guess.
So I think you're wrong about the song being de-evolution of humanity. Kids' songs always sucked. People complained even more about Barney back in the day. I think the scary part is that kids who grew up with YouTube have NO ATTENTION SPAN. They're used to getting what they want instantly. They get what they want in the car, in the grocery store, etc. There's so much custom content tailored to their narrow interest. Thus, when I was my kids' age, I LOVED movies. I was so excite when Disney+ launched.
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> I think the scary part is that kids who grew up with YouTube have NO ATTENTION SPAN
Yep, it's all YouTube's fault. That's why way back in 1968, Sesame Street and The Electric Company segments were originally designed to be no more than 90 seconds in length.
Oh, wait [usatoday.com]...
And I doubt it's any truer today that in was in 1998. Or in 2015.
Re: It's worse than you realize (Score:2)
"I think the scary part is that kids who grew up with YouTube have NO ATTENTION SPAN"
This is a *social problem* that was really intensified during the past 20 years.
Kids are no different now than 40 years ago. Only now they are exposed to media that teaches them to have the attention span of a flea.
Compare cartoons from the 1980s to the 2020s. Huge difference there, as if speed has become an epidemic in Toontown.
If kids in the 1980s were exposed to 2020s media, they would have the exact same problems too.
Co
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Not really. This is the trend where youngest millenials and oldest gen-z put their toddler in front of a screen with autoplay youtube and just let it go until toddler falls asleep. Hours of watch time.
It's how we had that weird scandal about a year ago with utterly fucked up videos that were going into autoplay for such toddlers. They kept getting recommended because machine learning AI thought that people in colourful costumes with simply melody on background made for good toddler video. The fact that they
Re: Shakes Head (Score:3)
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That and youtube was (And may still be, i don't know) succeptable to keyword-stuffing in the title. You ended up with videos like "Spider man elsa frozen pepper pig puppet party."
Re:Shakes Head (Score:4, Interesting)
It's probably about 7,000,000 kids watching the thing 1000 times each.
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I don't even know what to say. The de-evolution of humanity is complete I guess.
You clearly don't have children. Pink Fong is awesome for toddlers and young kids. I just last night went over to our neighbors' house and our young son was singing and dancing and laughing with their similar age kids to Pink Fong songs for an hour and a half while us adults had a glass of wine and a real conversation. It's a decent distraction but not as zone-out screen time the way that shows like Paw Patrol and others are. And young kids resonate with it, which is great for getting them into more sop
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Film analogy (Score:2)
This tracks (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure a solid million or so of these views are our 8 year old watching it on loop - and I'm pretty sure we can't be the only ones!
Anyone else never heard of Despacito? (Score:2)
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Despacito?... I've never heard of any of the top 10! I know *of* Bieber, but I don't know the song. Maybe I've heard ten seconds of the chorus on a TV commercial, but I couldn't tell you without hearing it.
slow news day? (Score:1)
Only 30,187 years? (Score:2)
Wow, I get it now. I guess with that, I'm proud to announce that my kids have played Baby Shark on repeat for the last 3 years and apparently were the ones that put them over the top. Go PinkFong!
--
"doo doo doo de doo doo de doo doo" - Mama Shark
About the Melody (Score:1)
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So basically a variant of 4 Chords [youtube.com], the latter being I - V - vi - IV.
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You missed the point.
Yes, obviously the chords are different. Baby Shark uses the first half of the Passamezzo moderno [wikipedia.org] progression (I IV I V I IV I-V I), but the pattern of chord progressions [wikipedia.org] is common amongst music that is popular.
i.e.
It is interesting that the '50s progression [wikipedia.org] (I vi IV V) got slightly reordered for pop (I V vi IV) that The Axis of Awesome demonstrated.
I know that each genre has their own common set progressions. i.e. Twelve-bar Blues and Sixteen-bar Blues, etc.
TL:DR; It would be interesti
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Ug, ug, ug, do-do-do-do
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I thought it was I IV vi V [wikipedia.org] ?
sorry: my ctrl key is broken (Score:2)
oops. bad paste. I mean to link to this I IV vi V [ultimate-guitar.com]
the other link was a chord progression that initially starts off as I IV I V that I was listening to for comparison.
Wasn't there a Ted Video on this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes! https://www.ted.com/talks/jame... [ted.com]
Basically, little kids re-watch videos over and over again. Baby shark is perfect baby catnip.
Whoever has the ad revenue for that video is pulling a fortune,.
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The summary at the top of this page says where the ad revenue goes. " recorded by South Korean company Pinkfong ... Pinkfong stands to have made about $5.2 million from YouTube streams alone. "
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Are they allowed to have ads on it? I though videos aimed at babies were automatically demonetized on YouTube.
Far less CPM for contextual ads (Score:2)
Videos made for children under 13 can have ads with contextual targeting, just not behavioral targeting. It's just that these contextually targeted ads earn one-third the cost per thousand impressions compared to behaviorally targeted ads (source: "An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content" by Beales and Eisenach (2014) [ssrn.com]).
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Anyone who is a parent already knows all of this... and any responsible parent already moderates it.
Its remarkable how some folks need "don't let young kids watch YouTube unsupervised" to be presented to them in a TED talk.
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Coincidence? (Score:2)
The freaking plague-whisperer in chief ! This population is officially becoming too stupid/infantile to live.
Pinkfong (Score:1)
Wait, how did Baby Shark make it to _Korea_? (Score:1)
Vogon Infestation (Score:1)
Re: Vogon Infestation (Score:1)
George Carlin was right (Score:2)
He said "You nail two pieces of wood together that have never been nailed together before and some schmuck will buy it from you."
Of course, this axiom can now be expanded to include whole categories of things that you don't have to physically make.
probably worthy of a sociology paper (Score:2)
Or a child psychology paper. It's clear to anyone who has been around preschool age kids what happened here. Little kids obsessively listen to the same music. Probably because unlike older kids and adults the experience stays fresh for them and they don't tire of it easily. A three year old didn't even know what music was a few years ago, and now they can dance and sign along to it? It blows a little kid's mind I'm sure.
Re: Those numbers are WAY over exaggerated (Score:1)
Would not be surprised... (Score:1)
I suggest you avoid this silly video unless you are a toddler.