When looking at a list of most watched videos on youtube, you'll find the vast majority
in the "hundreds of millions of views" club are various music videos. In the top 10, you'll
see a variety of household names like Ed Sheeran with 4.6 billion views on his Shape of You
music video, Justin Bieber's Sorry with 3.2 billion, and Katy Perry's Roar with 3 billion.
Embedded in this list, however, is a little song called "Baby Shark Dance", by Pinkfong,
with a whopping 4.6 billion views. And this number doesn't even tell the whole story,
as that is just one of over 100 versions of the song put out by Pinkfong, including the
original that came out in November of 2015- about 7 months before the 4.6 billion view
upload- that currently has 243 million views. Even the company's Spanish channel's Halloween
version of Baby Shark (which more or less just changes the last lyrics to "Halloween
doo doo doo doo") rings in at about 72 million views; and they didn't even bother to translate
the words sung into Spanish in the video itself, despite porting it to their Spanish channel.
Needless to say, on the back of this little hit, with the most viewed version even peaking
on Billboard Hot 100 at #32 in January of 2019, the company that owns the channel, SmartStudy,
has managed to spin it into not just success across several YouTube channels they own,
but to a Nickelodeon series and merchandise the world over- from blankets to clothes,
diapers, and, of course, toys. Kellogg's even created a Baby Shark cereal.
So how much have they made off of it? This is hard to quantify given, as noted, they've
leveraged the song to bolster the company and its parent company as a whole across multiple
channels and industries. But to begin with, on ads alone on the main video's 4.6 billion
views, after reaching out to a few children's channel creators and coming up with a ballpark
CPM and general monetization fill rate for children's channels (including looking at
the numbers before the relatively recent change in children's ads on Youtube), it would seem
they've probably earned around $7 to $14 million off of the main video youtube ads.
On top of this, according to SmartStudy, its Baby Shark song has at different times ranked
#1 on iTunes, Apple Music, Google Play, and Amazon, so generating an undisclosed, but
likely very significant sum, from there.
And, of course, their Baby Shark content has brought in a number of new subscribers and
regular views of the channel. As for numbers there, the furthest back we could find accurate
data on their main Pinkfong channel is March of 2017, about a year after the video started
to take off. In that month, they got about 80 million views and 71,000 new subscribers.
Fast-forward to today after the Baby Shark phenomenon went global, and they get approximately
half a billion views and 1M new subscribers every single month in recent months...
And that's just one of their countless popular channels in various languages, with the trending
data on the top ones we looked at all pointing squarely at the timing of Baby Shark's rise
kicking all of them into high gear...
And as for SmartStudy and potential gross earnings, their revenue in 2015 was about
$8.5 million. The next year, when Baby Shark became a big thing, they jumped to just over
$15 million. The year after that, they rose to $24 million. The year after that, in 2018,
they were up to $34.3 million. We couldn't yet find definitive data on their total 2019
figures, though based on their top channels' data progression, among other things we looked
at, we'd be surprised if they aren't pushing into the $45+ million range for 2019. On top
of that, the company's stock, as well as its parent company, Samsung Publishing, have been
soaring of late, making the Kim family behind the two companies a combined net-worth well
in excess of $100M in their personal stock shares alone.
The funny thing about all of this is- they don't actually own the rights to the song
they based their version on.
In fact, nobody knows who does, as nobody knows who first wrote it. However, while you'll
here from this from literally every source we could find, including from representatives
from SmartStudy, that the original song is in the public domain as it originated in the
early 1900s, based on our research, the evidence at hand does not seem to support that hypothesis
at all. It actually appears that SOMEBODY may still hold the copyright, if they can
prove they wrote it. Or, at the least, they'd have a good enough legal argument to pursue
the matter.
So where did the song actually come from?
Often mentioned along with this "early 1900s" narrative as supporting evidence that versions
of the song have been around forever include pointing to the French "Bébé Requin"- a
1967 song which, translated, means "Baby Shark".
The problem with this is that, other than the title and that it features a portion where
a figurative baby shark is going after someone, this song bears little resemblance to the
Baby Shark ear worm we know today and its direct predecessors. Translated to English,
the pertinent part states:
I am a baby shark With a white tummy and pearly white teeth
I'll pull you down Into the warm waters
And without your knowing, With love, with sweetness,
hmhmhmhm.. I, pretty Baby Shark,
Want to devour your heart
Baby shark, velvet baby Baby shark, baby of love...
To keep you I will fight with my sisters
I want to be the only one To eat your heart
Needless to say, it's a bit of a stretch to call this song an ancestor to the Baby Shark
we have today.
Moving on from there, the German Kleiner Hai ("Little Shark") is commonly pointed to as
yet more evidence the song has been around forever. In fact, a version of this song performed
by Alexandra Müller, aka Alemuel, actually went viral in Germany, resulting in the first,
albeit brief and isolated, Baby Shark craze all the way back in 2007 and 2008.
Now, we'll grant that our research-fu when it comes to German is lacking compared to
our abilities in English. But, for what it's worth, we could find no documented version
of this German version that predates the first known English version which we'll get to shortly.
And even anecdotal accounts from Germans only seem to go back to around the 1990s or so
on this song. That's not to say it's not possible people were singing the German version before
this, just the document trail doesn't seem to be there. Though, if any native German
speakers care to correct us if you know of something sooner, we're all ears.
Also, seriously, everyone go watch the Alemuel version. It's... interesting... and a virtual
time-capsule of a video on what the early days of YouTube were like.
This brings us back around to English and what appears to be the actual origin of the
song.
It turns out, it would seem the 1975 film Jaws.
This is very important to SmartStudy in particular as in the United States at least, after January
1, 1978, to quote copyright.gov, "copyright protection lasts for the life of the author
plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made
for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication
or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first." For works
prior to 1978, there are many factors involved in determining the copyright status, which
may or may not be important depending on how quickly after Jaws came out the song was written
and the exact circumstances.
This brings us to the earliest documented instance of a version of the Baby Shark song,
which comes to us from the 1981 children's music book, Making Music Fun: A Complete Collection
of Games, Puzzles, and Activities for the Elementary Classroom.
Noteworthy here is that the song is not called "Baby Shark", but rather, "Jaws". However,
it otherwise strongly resembles the Baby Shark song, "doo doo doos" and all. Starting "JAWS
du du du du du Jaws du du du du du" etc. It also includes a portion that mentions "Baby
Jaws" and a "Giant jaws", a lady-swimming, etc. It also mentions, "One of the aspects
of the song that is the most fun is putting gestures to it," implying some form of the
chomping movements and the like were likely there as well at this point.
Now, you might be thinking, "Of course they called it 'Jaws', it was a huge franchise
at the time, so perhaps they were just co-opting a pre-existing song in the public domain and
changing the name to 'Jaws'." That is always possible. But, first, despite our sincerest
efforts, we could come up with zero documented evidence of such a song pre-dating Jaws, including
looking for all sorts of potential modification to lyrics and the like. Fast-forward to the
1980s, however, and the song pops up all over the place.
Now, it's always possible the popularity of the film made some ultra obscure children's
song more popular, and we'd love it if someone found earlier hard documented evidence of
the song, as it's always fun to track these sorts of things down definitively, especially
on topics nobody else has seemingly done a deep dive on. But even if such a song did
exist, there is a key factor of this version, which is integral to the modern version, that
points to it being a creation AFTER Jaws, and is significant enough that it would likely
still be eligible for copyright as a derivative work based on these changes that still exist
in the Pinkfong version.
We're guessing a large percentage of you have already spotted it, but to make it explicit-
the evidence that this version of the song came after Jaws, and perhaps the entire song
itself given the lack of evidence to it before, can be found in the famous "doo doo doo doo"
part of the music. Change the tempo a bit to be a bit more ominous and slowed down from
the way it's sung today and you get arguably one of the most famous movie themes of all
time- the music played as Jaws approaches its victims.
As for where the aforementioned Making Music Fun 1981 music book got the song, they do
not claim authorship, simply stating "Here is a song that we learned from a second grader
at the St. Thomas School in West Hempstead New York About Jaws..."
In the end, given the timing some version of the song first started appearing in documented
history, anecdotal accounts from people singing it at kid's camps and the like not starting
until the 1980s, and the inclusion of a version of the Jaws theme, all evidence to date seems
to indicate the song came AFTER Jaws, probably written by some camp counselor or kid's music
teacher, and spreading and being adapted from there.
And speaking of improvised lyrics, all documented early instances of the song more or less followed
the trend of having the family of sharks going along chasing and then eating someone, or
a group of people, with some version of the "doo doo" sped up Jaws theme in between each
progression. This is in stark contrast to the Pinkfong version where the humans get
away.
So how did we get the slightly more tame version? It turns out the credit for that seems to
go to children's entertainer Johnny Only, who even posted a music video of it on YouTube
all the way back September of 2011- 4 years before Pinkfong's first version and almost
5 before their viral version.
Unfortunately for Only, while his song, music, dance moves, etc. are all exceptionally similar
to the PinkFong/SmartStudy version (some say too-similar, which we'll get into in the Bonus
Facts in a bit), his music video didn't take off, even today only having just shy of 150,000
views. PinkFong's, on the other hand, which is far better crafted to appeal to the littles
visually, has since made SmartStudy many tens of millions of dollars as noted. And, unlike
adult-music fads like Macarena and Gangnam Style and the like, as this one's kid's related
and there are always new kids to come along to enjoy it, it's not likely to stop making
the company massive sums of money, really potentially forever if they keep leveraging
it as entertainment mediums evolve, and creating new versions they can continue to copyright.
So next time you're sitting in your car in traffic going to your dead-end job that you
loath, just remember, there is a company out there who has literally made at minimum tens
of millions of dollars already off a song they plucked from, allegedly, the public domain,
modifying it only slightly from an existing version, claimed the copyright on that version
based on those tiny modifications, did a few minutes of recording, presumably a day or
two of video editing, uploaded it on the interwebs, and now will be cashing checks for it for
the rest of their lives, as well as their kid's lives and beyond.
Of course, in truth, that's an oversimplification as before releasing that video they also did
several years of work uploading almost 400 videos, improving their craft and building
their platform in the process, all culminating in that video having a chance to go viral
in the first place. Then, with the early going of views seeming promising, it spurred them
to focus a ton of marketing efforts and money into keeping it going, with their marketing
team ultimately helping it along to becoming a global phenomenon and leveraging its popularity
to make money in other mediums... But quit trying to ruin the no-effort, overnight, rags
to riches narrative.
Bonus Fact:
As you might expect given that Johnny Only was the first known person to create a version
of the Baby Shark song that cuts out the whole eating people thing, and that Pinkfong's version
is extremely similar to his, and that they are making Scrooge McDuck money off it, as
well as getting all the credit for the song to boot, this hasn't set too well with Only.
Says Only of the similarities, "The shortened length, the key, the addition of instrumentation,
the type of instrumentation, the rhythm, the tempo, the sanitation of the lyrics for toddler
age audiences, the tempo change mid song, the splash at the beginning... Even some of
the harmony styles and things like adding a lower voice when they introduce daddy shark....
all the ones before mine are camp versions with blood and gore, loss of limbs, and frequently
death. The toddlers also like the shark family and the fact that I made it shorter."
Nevertheless, despite the similarities, he did not initially pursue any legal action
against SmartStudy as he just assumed the song was in the public domain, and thus any
version he made would be too, so they were free to use it as far as he was concerned.
It was only after the Liberty Korea Party reached out to him to ask for permission to
use his version of the song, which he granted as the thought he had no right to say no,
that things came to a head. You see, SmartStudy threatened to sue Liberty Korea for infringing
on their copyright, with the Liberty Party naturally responding that Only, not SmartStudy,
owned the copyright to the version they were using. Said Only of this, "If Pinkfong's song
is so close to mine that they can't even tell the difference, and Pinkfong tries to claim
copyright infringement against their version when the political party is using my version,
doesn't that mean that my version also has copyright protection?" This got him looking
into the legal side more, as well as SmartStudy's version compared to his. Given the similarities,
you'll perhaps not be surprised to learn that whether they infringed on Only's copyright
or not is currently being decided in court.