Baby Shark becomes YouTube's most-watched video

Baby Shark, the infuriatingly catchy children's rhyme recorded by South Korean company Pinkfong, has become the most-watched video ever on YouTube.

The song has now been played 7.04 billion times, overtaking the previous record holder Despacito, the Latin pop smash by singer Luis Fonsi.

Played back-to-back, that would mean Baby Shark has been streamed continuously for 30,187 years.

Pinkfong stands to have made about $5.2m (£4m) from YouTube streams alone.

Baby Shark, the infuriatingly catchy children's rhyme recorded by South Korean company Pinkfong, has become the most-watched video ever on YouTube.

The song has now been played 7.04 billion times, overtaking the previous record holder Despacito, the Latin pop smash by singer Luis Fonsi.

Played back-to-back, that would mean Baby Shark has been streamed continuously for 30,187 years.

Pinkfong stands to have made about $5.2m (£4m) from YouTube streams alone.

But none of them could match the phenomenal success of Pinkfong's interpretation, which was sung by 10-year-old Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and uploaded to YouTube in 2015.

It's addictive "doo doo doo doo doo doo" hook and fishy dance moves became a craze in South Korea, where popular bands like Red Velvet, Girls' Generation and Blackpink started incorporating it into their concerts.

The following June, Pinkfong put out a second video, titled Baby Shark Dance, featuring two cute kids performing the dance routine.

That clip that inspired the hashtag #BabySharkChallenge - with everyone from Indonesian farmworkers to pop stars Cardi B and Josh Groban joining the fun.

The song is catnip for children, whose appetite for repetition has undoubtedly helped it climb the ranks of YouTube's most-watched videos.

"Nursery rhymes have always been sort of slow, very cute, but something that would help your children fall asleep - as opposed to Baby Shark," Pinkfong's marketing director Jamie Oh told the BBC in 2018.

"Pinkfong's Baby Shark is very trendy and it has a very bright beat with fun dance moves. The animation is very vivid. We call it K-Pop for the next generation."

The company is turning the song into a movie and a musical, and aspires to make Baby Shark "another classic for kids music, like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", Oh added. BBC