Viral hit ‘Harlem Shake’ climbs to top of US charts

Producer Baauer scores major hit with his 2012 single

Baauer, the producer behind the song currently soundtracking thousands of ‘Harlem Shake’ YouTube videos, has hit the top spot in the US charts.

Canadian producer Baauer released ‘Harlem Shake’ in 2012 through Diplo’s Mad Decent label, but has seen the song reach previously unthinkable levels of popularity off the back of the viral craze in which users upload videos of themselves and their friends dancing to the song. It is estimated that there are over 40,000 different ‘Harlem Shake’ videos on YouTube with over 175million hits between them.

This popularity has transferred into the charts with fans keen to download the song they have heard in the videos as well as the news that YouTube plays will now count toward the figures which determine who is placed where in the Billboard Hot 100. Baauer is the first beneficiary of this change in the rules and sits at Number One following 103million streams of the song in the last seven days and an additional 262,000 downloads.

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“The notion that a song has to sell in order to be a hit feels a little two or three years ago to me,” Billboard’s Bill Werde told The New York Times. The music business today, much to its credit, has started to learn that there are lots of different ways a song can be a hit, and lots of different ways that the business can benefit from it being a hit.”

Baauer has also seen a sales boost in the UK, where he is currently Number Three in the Official Singles Chart.

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