Gangnam Style, which is racing towards 1 billion views on YouTube, will net pop star Psy at least $7.9 million this year, according to a report.
The Associated Press reports that Psy will cobble together that amount from a variety of sources, most notably commercial endorsements, which will generate $4.6 million. Psy's commercial endorsements include ads for Samsung and LG Uplus in his native South Korea. The estimate comes from Chung Yu-seok, an analyst with Kyobo Securities.
Despite the unprecedented YouTube success of Gangnam, Psy won't even make $1 million from the video itself. The AP cited TubeMogul, a video and ad-buying platform, which estimates Psy will make $870,000 from ads shown during the video. Google takes about half of the ad revenues. With about 880 million views for the video at present, that nets out to $0.001 -- one-tenth of one cent -- per view.
Happily for Psy, there were also 2.7 million iTunes downloads for the tune, which will bring him about $2.4 million in income. (Apple takes 30% of all sales.) Psy also makes about $0.02 every time the song is played on a streaming service in South Korea, resulting in about $61,000, according to the report. CD sales added another $50,000 or so.
In addition, Psy, a.k.a. Park Jae-sang, is also part of a family that owns 30% of DI Corp., a South Korean company that makes equipment companies use to make computer chips. The sale price of the stock has doubled since Gangnam was released.