There’s one useful way to measure the success or failure of a work of art: experience it for yourself, then form an opinion. But there are many, many ways—too many to measure!—to measure a work of art’s popularity and commercial success, and one of those ways, it turns out, is the “Vevo 24 hour view-count record.” Until this week, Vevo 24 hour view-count record handicappers presumably thought that the Vevo 24 hour view-count record set by BTS back in August, when their video for “Idol” received 44 million views in 24 hours, was the unassailable champion of the Vevo 24 hour view-count record derby. (This conventional wisdom was so unchallenged that Vevo 24 hour view-count record coverage has plummeted to nearly nothing in recent months.) But this week, Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” video absolutely shattered BTS’s Vevo 24 hour view-count record, winning headlines wordwide for upending the race and ruining everyone’s ballots for their office Vevo 24 hour view-count record pools. In the 24-hour period from 3:00 p.m. EST on Friday to 3:00 p.m. EST on Saturday, someone clicked play on Ariana Grande’s latest music video more than 50 million times. Experts speculate that more than one person may have been clicking play, because it would take an individual Vevo 24 hour view-count record junkie more than 500 years to watch the five-and-a-half minute video for “Thank U, Next” that many times in a row, which would exceed the Vevo 24 hour view-count record’s strict 24 hour limit by more than 499 years and 364 days.
JP Evangelista, Vevo’s Head of Content, Programming, and Marketing, issued a statement clarifying the amount of pleasure it gave Vevo to announce that Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” video had broken the Vevo 24 hour view-count record:
It’s with great pleasure that we announce that Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” has broken the Vevo 24 hour view-count record. This video continues a string of immensely creative visual work that Ariana has released on our platform this year. Each video has been meticulously crafted and has had a brilliant lead up campaign. Ariana and Hannah Lux Davis’ entertaining work now joins the ranks of some of our most successful videos of all time. We congratulate Ariana and the Republic family on this massive success.
It’s just another in a long string of accomplishments and accolades for Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” video, which was released a little more than 24 hours ago. Billboard reports that it also holds the record for the largest simultaneous audience to tune in to a video posted using YouTube’s “Premiere” feature, racking up a staggering 829,000 simultaneous viewers. Those numbers were unimaginable when YouTube introduced the “Premiere” feature in June of 2018, but Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next” video is upending all of our preconceived notions about the number of simultaneous viewers who watch music videos posted online using YouTube’s “Premiere” feature, just as it upended our understanding of the Vevo 24 hour view-count record. Of course, it wouldn’t be Vevo 24 hour view-count record season without Vevo 24 hour view-count record acceptance tweets, and Grande’s shows why she’s the Vevo 24 hour view-count record contender to beat:
Short, simple, and to the point. It’s no wonder that Grande’s tweet has already shattered the Twitter 24 hour retweet-count for Vevo 24 hour view-count record acceptance tweets record. Can the Vevo 48 hour view-count record be far behind? Not if you press play on this video 50 million times in the next day:
Now can we please stop talking about Vevo 24 hour view-count records until the next Vevo 24 hour view-count record season rolls around?
