2017·The platform era·amazing
Despacito
This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaPlayable from the source
A Spanish-language song from Puerto Rico became the most-watched thing on YouTube, and stayed there for years.
What this was
A reggaeton-pop single by Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee, released in January 2017 with a video shot in La Perla, San Juan. It was not sung in English. A remix with Justin Bieber followed in April, but the original video is the one that kept climbing.
It first appeared in 2017, during the platform era. A surviving copy is on YouTube.
In August 2017 it became the most-viewed video in YouTube's history, and in April 2018 the first video of any kind to pass five billion views. It was the first predominantly Spanish-language song to top the Billboard Hot 100 since Macarena in 1996, and it held the number one spot for sixteen weeks — an unambiguous demonstration that the platform's audience was never mainly Anglophone and that the industry had been measuring the wrong thing.
It reshaped how labels treat Latin music worldwide and made streaming totals rather than radio the accepted measure of a global hit. Its record stood until 2020. In Puerto Rico it also drew a complicated local argument about the filming location, a neighbourhood with a long history of being represented badly by outsiders.
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Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
What we knowWhere it came from
There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. What it began as is recorded here, and what is shown is a later copy.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment was released commercially before the internet carried it. Originally published on commercial-release.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- A reggaeton-pop single by Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee, released in January 2017 with a video shot in La Perla, San Juan. It was not sung in English. A remix with Justin Bieber followed in April, but the original video is the one that kept climbing.
- Where
- Known on YouTube.