AUGUST 1, 2019

Indian artist Badshah recently beat BTS’s YouTube record of having the most views in the first twenty-four hours upon release.

The Bollywood singer’s MV for ‘Paagal’ accumulated around 75 million views in just twenty-four hours while ‘Boy with Luv’ had 74.6 million.

However, YouTube did not congratulate Badshah, prompting the artist to speak out and say that YouTube was discriminating him because he was Indian.

Other people such as rival companies have also stated that Badshah was only probably able to garner such high views through buying YouTubeads and bots.

However, the practice of promoting and marketing through is actually quite common and done by other agencies as well, others pointed out.

According to Bloomberg:

“The incident has led to scrutiny of what many in the music industry say is a common practice—buying tens of millions of views. When releasing a new single, major record labels will buy an advertisement on YouTube that places their music video in between other clips. If viewers watch the ad for more than a few seconds, YouTube counts that as a view, boosting the overall total. Blackpink and Swift, among others, have done it. Badshah just took it a step further, people familiar with the matter say.”

Do you think YouTube is having double standards and not giving due credit to Badshah? Feel free to share your thoughts

UPDATED (August 1st, 2019): Badshah spoke of double standards and not discrimination in his interview about YouTube’s reaction to his record. Kpopmap apologizes  for the misleading information regarding YouTube and not accurately conveying Badshah’s statement.