BTS’ summer hit ‘Butter’ melts records on YouTube and Spotify
- The K-pop group’s second English-language hit broke records previously set by last year’s release, ‘Dynamite’
- Sorry, ARMY, it didn’t debut at No. 1 on the Global Top 50 chart - that honour goes to Olivia Rodrigo and ‘Good 4 U’
BTS continues to break streaming records with their latest release, “Butter”. Photo: EPABTS’ latest hit, Butter, has already shattered records since its release Friday, allowing K-pop to continue its smoothly choreographed dance to world domination.
The South Korean boy band’s second English-language single hit 3.9 million “peak concurrents” (the maximum number of simultaneous users) in its first 24 hours, according to the YouTube Music Team.
That topped the previous record: 3 million for BTS’ first English-language single, Dynamite. The new video also topped Dynamite’s record of 101.1 million views in 24 hours, reaching 108.2 million.
Butter has garnered nearly 209 million YouTube views in just over four days. It still has a ways to go before eclipsing Dynamite, which has racked up more than 1 billion views since its August 2020 release.
7 thoughts we had watching ‘Butter’
But that’s not all! Though Butter didn’t match Dynamite’s No. 1 debut on Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart (don’t shoot the messenger, ARMY; blame that darn talented Olivia Rodrigo and Good 4 U), it set Spotify’s first-day streaming record with 20.9 million “unfiltered” global streams (and 11.042 million filtered).
That huge disparity between filtered and unfiltered has to do with the way Spotify determines whether streams are legitimate, which has miffed BTS stans.
BTS’ McDonald’s meal to be released soon
Spotify states in its user agreement that “artificially increasing play counts” is prohibited. Its counting system has affected fans’ efforts to churn out even richer numbers for Butter, as the service doesn’t allow the use of AI bots and caps the number of repeat plays by individual users in 24 hours.
BTS stans are upset enough with Spotify’s counting policies that they have managed to get the hashtag #InvestigateSpotify trending on Twitter. In the meantime, they can bask in the many records BTS’ new release has set.