The song has now been played 7.04 billion times, overtaking the previous record-holder Despacito, the Latin pop smash by singer Luis Fonsi.

A popular children’s rhyme recorded by South Korean company Pinkfong, Baby Shark is now the most-watched video on YouTube.

The song has now been played 7.04 billion times, overtaking the previous record-holder Despacito, the Latin pop smash by singer Luis Fonsi.

The song, which was recorded by Korean-American singer Hope Segoine and produced by South Korean educational company Pinkfong, was originally uploaded to YouTube on June 17, 2016.

It has since become one of the world’s most recognized tunes, even breaking the Billboard Top 100 in 2019.

Played back-to-back, that would mean Baby Shark has been streamed continuously for 30,187 years.

A new version of “Baby Shark” was recorded earlier this year to help promote proper hand hygiene in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Pinkfong stands to have made about $5.2m (£4m) from YouTube streams alone.

It took four years for Baby Shark to ascend to the top of YouTube’s most-played chart, but the song is actually much older than that.

It is thought to have originated in US summer camps in the 1970s. One theory says it was invented in 1975, as Steven Spielberg’s Jaws became an box office smash around the world.