Stars · music
Jimin's 'Like Crazy' Hit 1 Billion Streams. His Wikipedia Page Was Below Average That Day.
Big Hit Music announced the milestone on 17 September — the first fully Korean-language song by a K-pop soloist to cross 1 billion Spotify streams. English Wikipedia reading of Jimin that day sat at 0.89x his 30-day average.
The table this is written from: /what-moves-english-reading
BTS’s Jimin passed a streaming record on 17 September: Big Hit Music said his 2023 solo single “Like Crazy” became the first fully Korean-language song by a K-pop soloist to cross 1 billion streams on Spotify. The track had already made history at release, debuting atop Billboard’s Hot 100 — itself a first for a Korean-language solo song — and topping iTunes charts in all 119 regions it tracks.
We checked what that announcement did to how often people looked Jimin up on English Wikipedia.
Nothing. Over the 29 days before the announcement (19 August-16 September), Jimin averaged 2,022 views a day. On 17 September, the day Big Hit Music’s milestone went out, his page drew 1,801 views — 0.89 times his own average. That’s a quieter day than usual, not a spike.
The one day that did stand out in our window was 23 August, at 2,661 views (1.32x baseline) — six days before the streaming announcement, with no news event we could find naming Jimin that day. We are not attaching it to this story or guessing at a cause; it goes in the record as unexplained.
The pattern matches what we found when Jin’s “Don’t Say You Love Me” crossed the same 1-billion mark in August: a Spotify-side number, tracking people already listening, doesn’t require anyone to go look up who the artist is. Two data points from the same group is not a rule — it’s two data points.
Our running method for checking what actually moves English Wikipedia reading is on what-moves-english-reading.
These are statistics, not you. This is not investment advice.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- STARNEWS — News report, 'BTS's Jimin Breaks 1 Billion Streams for First Korean Song "Like Crazy",' 2026-09-17 · https://www.starnewskorea.com/en/music/2026/09/17/2026091708074959211
- The Korea Herald — News report, 'BTS' Jimin sets streaming record with 'Like Crazy','' 2026-09-17 · https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10876754
- Wikimedia Foundation — Pageviews API — Daily English Wikipedia pageviews, all-access, user agents only, for Jimin, 19 August-17 September 2026 · https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/
What we checked
- 30-day baseline (19 August-17 September 2026, excluding 17 September itself): Jimin averaged 2,022 English Wikipedia views a day.
- 17 September, the day Big Hit Music announced the milestone: 1,801 views, 0.89x that baseline — below a typical day, not above it.
- The single highest day in our window, 23 August at 2,661 views (1.32x), has no news event we could find naming Jimin that day — marked unexplained rather than attached to this story.
What we left out, and why
- Any claim the milestone is not real or not significant. Big Hit Music and Spotify's own Billions Club listing are independent, verifiable sources for the stream count — we are only reporting that it produced no reading spike.
- Spotify's own stream count. That number comes from Spotify's platform, not from our measurement — we hold reading data, not streaming data.
- Whether 'Like Crazy' is actually the first fully Korean-language solo song to reach the mark. We are relaying Big Hit Music's and STARNEWS's characterization of the record, not independently verifying it against every other K-pop soloist's catalogue.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
If you work in this business
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