christalcornish: Lady Gaga Reaches 1 Billion YouTube Views

Singer dubs her little monsters the 'kings and queens of YouTube.'
By Gil Kaufman

Lady Gaga
Photo: Andy Sheppard/ Redferns/ Getty Images

Justin Bieber put up a valiant fight, but Lady Gaga has officially taken the crown as the first artist to reach one billion views on YouTube. Gaga celebrated the landmark on Sunday by tweeting out her thanks to her little monsters for helping her reach the improbable milestone.

"We reached 1 Billion views on youtube little monsters!" she wrote. "If we stick together we can do anything. I dub u kings and queens of youtube! Unite!"

Though Gaga notched the record first, Bieber is close behind with more than 962 million views, and he's expected to join her in that rarified air by November 1.

Gaga averaged almost 1.8 million views per day in September, while Bieber averaged around 3.7 million views per day in September. Both easily outpace the next closest artist, late pop icon Michael Jackson, who has around 600 million views on YouTube. Though Gaga hit the billion plateau first, Bieber has actually been lapping her in YouTube views for most of this year. From July 1 to September 28, TubeMogul reported that the teen pop star averaged 3.98 million daily views to Lady G's 2.04 million. He's been at that torrid pace since February 28, averaging 3.83 million daily views while Gaga has averaged 2.53 million.

It helps that both artists have a number of YouTube's all-time most-viewed music clips, with Gaga's "Bad Romance" piling up 297 million views, "Just Dance" further back at 124 million views, "Alejandro" with 94 million and "Telephone" with 88 million. As for Bieber, his smash "Baby" is the most-watched video ever on YouTube with 366 million views, while his "Never Let You Go" has 96 million and "Never Say Never" 97 million.

Gaga actually passed the one billion mark in total online views (both on and outside of YouTube) in March, thanks to landing three clips in the 100 million-plus club.

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