With Psy's Gangnam Style being the first uploaded video to reach 1 billion views, one's mind wanders to the financial implications for the Korean rapper. Given the advertising opportunity for videos with a high hit count, Psy is prime real location for such ventures. 

"I've seen a statistic which reckons the one song will have generated something like $8m [£5m] by the end of the year from money that comes directly from YouTube through advertising plus download sales, its uses in adverts and TV programmes," Chris Cooke, business editor of the CMU music news site, told the BBC. "It shows that YouTube - which is a free-to-use as a promotional platform for the music labels - can lead to substantial income. Should every artist be trying to think of a funny video that will go viral and be mimicked? I don't know whether it's a template that can be copied, but it certainly shows how quickly an eye-catching clip can spread thanks to social networks and YouTube."

Another aspect of the video's success is the videos that accompany it. From soldiers in the Middle East, to the wonderful world of Minecraft, fans have mimicked Gangnam style, leading traffic back to the original video, which of course, helped it clamber over the unprecedented 1 billion mark.