On May 13, Vietnamese pop singer Son Tung M-TP (Tung)’s “Run Now”
reportedly hit 22 million views and topped the #1 spot on the world’s
most watched videos on YouTube – all these within the past 24 hours
after it was uploaded on May 12, 12am VNT. This also means that he has
surpassed top K-pop band BTS to become the current Asian artist that
released a music video with the highest recorded number of views in 24
hours. But Tung – for his previous plagiarism controversies involving
K-pop stars like BTS and Jung Yong Hwa, it is no wonder why he is
frequently being compared to them by Vietnamese fans and media on
social media.
The news of Tung’s “Run Now” breaking BTS’s “DNA” was first published
by a Vietnamese news outlet. It turned out that the original source
was from Tung’s official Facebook page as the administrator published
the YouTube Analytics page as the evidence to announce the good news.
However, some Vietnamese netizens specifically pointed out that the
YouTube Analytics page showed that the total number of views was
“estimated”. In another word, the number of views was not actual, or
real. To answer this mysterious question (to viewers) that actually
reflects a video popularity, YouTube published an article “How Video
Views Are Counted” on January 30, 2018 to address. In case you can’t
see it, here’s what YouTube explained about how video views are
counted.