An Arabic Music Video Spent 32 Days in the Danish and Norwegian Charts

The longest continuous run we recorded anywhere between 26 July and 19 August 2026 does not belong to a Marvel trailer or a global pop release. It belongs to a music video in Arabic, released by a Syrian artist, which has been in the Danish and Norwegian top 50 for 32 consecutive days and in the Swedish chart for 27. On 19 August it still holds 36th place in both Denmark and Norway, 36 days after publication. It appears in exactly two of the 72 countries we track. Not in Egypt, not in Saudi Arabia, not in Iraq, not in the United Arab Emirates — all four of which we monitor, and all four of which discard it. A track sung in Arabic charting only in Scandinavia is not an accident of measurement; it is the clearest single illustration in our dataset of what a national chart actually describes.

01

Thirty-two days, two countries, 16.5 million views

Al Shami - Baby [Official Music Video] (2026) / الشامي - بي بي

Al Shami - الشامي

The video has accumulated 16,583,391 views and has been online for 36 days. In Denmark and Norway it has held a chart place for 32 of those days, our longest recorded run; in Sweden, 27 days. Both Denmark and Norway sit in the ten slowest charts in the world, at 16 and 15 per cent daily turnover, which gave the track the room to stay. But slowness alone does not explain why it entered: Bulgaria and Croatia are slower still, and never carried it.

02

What sits above it in the same chart

KATSEYE (캣츠아이) 'Hootie Frutti' Official MV

HYBE LABELS

Number one in both Denmark and Norway today is a Korean-American pop release with 23.6 million views, charting in 46 countries. It arrived five days ago. Placed side by side, the two entries show the two ways of occupying a Nordic chart: global simultaneous distribution, which produces a high rank quickly and disappears, and a diaspora audience, which produces a modest rank and holds it for a month.

03

And what passes through

Avengers: Doomsday | Special Look | In Theaters December 18

Marvel Entertainment

This trailer entered 49 charts including both Nordic ones four days ago. Marvel Entertainment occupies 53 chart places across 53 countries today with two videos. That is the standard model of international reach: everywhere at once, briefly. The Arabic track did the opposite — two countries, thirty-two days — and no marketing calendar produced it.

04

The Nordic charts are unusually open

SIDEMEN AMONG US BUT IF YOU REPORT A BODY YOU DIE

MoreSidemen

Norway shows the second-lowest exclusivity of our panel: only 8 per cent of its top 50 appears in no other country, against 94 per cent for Japan. Denmark is at 18 per cent. These are charts that import almost everything they display, including this Sidemen video present in 18 countries. An open chart is precisely the kind that a community-driven release can enter, because there is no wall of local production keeping it out.

Both countries have long-established Arabic-speaking populations and no national broadcaster addressing them in Arabic. YouTube's country charts have no editorial line and no language policy: they count what is watched inside a set of borders. When a community large enough to move a national ranking is not addressed anywhere else, the chart becomes the only public place where its listening shows up. This is why the same track fails in the Arabic-speaking markets we monitor. Egypt turns over 58 per cent of its chart daily and Saudi Arabia 59 per cent — both among the fastest in the world, saturated with local releases that arrive faster than any single video can hold a place. The video is not more popular in Oslo than in Cairo. It is simply more visible there, because in Oslo nothing pushes it out.

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