It's been 5 years since Justin Bieber released his world-changing 'Baby' video 

Five years ago, on Feb. 19, 2010, Justin Bieber posted his “Baby” video on YouTube and changed everything.

The video itself is remarkably unexciting: Bieber, his hairstyle, some friends, and some cute girls hang out in a terribly underlit bowling alley flirting and having a very ’80s boys-versus-girls dance-off. Eventually an old man in expensive sunglasses comes by and does a rap.

Its effects on the media industry, on the other hand, are much more impressive. For one, there was Bieber himself, who managed to survive his tween fanbase’s notoriously short attention span and establish himself as a major pop star, complete with a protracted bad-boy phase and the recent entirely predictable mea culpa moment.

More importantly, it represented the moment where YouTube came into its own as a legitimate music platform. Internet-addicted youth had been using it as a jukebox for a couple years at that point, but Bieber was the first star to find a major audience by playing straight to YouTube users, and when he finally went pro his fans continued to watch him there. At well over a billion views, “Baby” was the most-watched music video in YouTube history before “Gangnam Style” went epically viral.

These days, YouTube is one of the biggest music platforms in the world. Since early 2013, Billboard has been factoring U.S. YouTube streams into its Hot 100 chart. Meanwhile, label A&R’s are scouring not just YouTube but even more niche platforms like Vine and even Snapchat for the next viral teen idol, although none has come close to Bieberdom. All this from a video that looks like it was shot for the cost of renting out a bowling alley for an afternoon.

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