TIHWD's video effect was negligible though. It's clearly being pushed by airplay. The video might as well not exist.

john pls

But it started climbing for good after the video release.

There was no airplay until the video dropped.

Was driving on lunch break and this was the most requested song of the day on my local top 40 station

Videos don't really push singles anymore. It's more for the streaming points. Unless it's Wrecking Ball or something, and even that is anomaly.

UK but havent heard it yet

Yeah I have notice that with a lot of recent videos, like Black Widow and Break Free.

Videos still push singles, it's just Katy who changed her strategy which I'm not really fond of. She used to wait for a decent airplay before she put out a new video that's why the effect was big.

28.9M vevo
#60 on itunes
#4 on video Itunes

30 million by tonight and 35 million at the end of the weekend

I'd go with 33M to be safe.

But what you're saying is that the radio exposure fueled the video views which in turn fueled the sales. The video wasn't the primary vehicle (like it used to be). Sure there's some push, but not like shooting to the top 20 or something. When is the last time a video did that? Probably last year, and only a handful of times.

She couldn't do that this time around because she lost her momentum with "Birthday"'s underperformance and had to stoke the radio fires a little more with the video first.

"Birthday"'s video came early because it was supposed to fill in for the absence of live promo and they needed something to keep the song visible to the public.