iShred jumps up the charts thanks to viral video

Last Saturday, we posted this video of the band Atomic Tom singing with their iPhones on the B train over the East River. Since then, the video has gone viral, nabbing more than a million views on YouTube. But the band isn't the only group benefiting from the attention -- we heard from the developers of iShred, the guitar app seen in the video, and apparently just being seen in the video has had a huge effect for them as well. The app has jumped from #84 to #4 on the App Store music app charts, and has reached the #65 app overall.

That's quite amazing, and it shows that people are getting recommendations for their apps from all over the place, from sites like ours to just spotting apps used in other contexts. What's most surprising isn't just the US App Store growth, but the fact that iShred has seen a big jump up overseas as well -- iShred is in the top ten in over 20 countries in the world. In Japan, we're told, it's the #3 app out of all of them. That's surprising -- when the video went viral, it must have become popular internationally.

Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that the iShred folks have put the app on sale for just US$0.99 (and honestly, this post will probably give them another nice jump in the listings). But it is interesting to see the effects of such a subtle app mention when it goes out and reaches the right people.