New York Magazine recently broke down Korean Pop singer Psy’s earnings from Gangnam Style – now the most popular YouTube video of all time. As you’d expect, he’s making serious bank. The one figure that caught my eye was the magazine’s breakdown of Psy’s YouTube profits, which it estimated at $1.7 million, or to be precise with view numbers from today, $1,763,764.63.
That figure was calculated based off the standard YouTube partner rate of a $2 CPM, meaning for every 1,000 views Psy receives $2 if he is running ads on his video, which he is. Psy isn’t running the relatively unobtrusive TrueView ads that let you skip after the first couple of seconds either, he is running big-brand long-form ads, so Psy could very well be making more, or less, depending on what kind of partnership he has with YouTube. We’ll never know, as partners are not supposed to reveal this information. (Mahola CEO and longtime YouTuber Jason Calacanis is cited as providing the magazine with the CPM information.)
Other interesting figures uncovered by New York Magazine include Psy’s revenue from digital sales in the U.S. ($243,720) and a share price rise of 26% for Psy’s management company YG Entertainment since Gangnam Style was put on YouTube.
