Prior to a controversial change to YouTube on August 5, 2015, newly uploaded videos “froze” at 301 views so that the views could be verified to have come from human viewers and not computer programs or bots. A view is defined as an individual playback of a video. Although YouTube officials refuse to give specifics, for fear of a small group of users who may use this info to manipulate the view counts by "gaming the system," researchers have determined that a video longer than a minute must be viewed for at least 30 seconds in order for a view to be counted. These specifics shouldn’t affect you too much. If you are listening to a song on YouTube, and you love it enough to listen to most or all of the video, you can rest assured your view was counted, as real fans of songs tend to go far beyond the 30-second mark. Hopefully, the vast majority of YouTube users are not view count inflators who try to game the system to make an obscure video appear to get more attention than it really does.
This meant that any video with 302 views or more was considered “popular” in YouTube’s eyes. If you have 377 views, you are 25% higher than 302 views because 302 + 25% = 302 + 75 = 377.