YouTube took credit today for pushing Chris Brown’s Forever, a song that was released over a year ago, to #4 on the iTunes singles chart and #3 on Amazon’s best-selling MP3 list.

YouTube suggests that user-generated video, combined with their rights management tools, packs a powerful marketing punch:

At YouTube, we have sophisticated content management tools in place to help rights holders control their content on our site. The rights holders for “Forever” used these tools to claim and monetize the song, as well as to start running Click-to-Buy links over the video, giving viewers the opportunity to purchase the music track on Amazon and iTunes.

As a result, the rights holders were able to capitalize on the massive wave of popularity generated by “JK Wedding Entrance Dance” — in the last week, searches for “Chris Brown Forever” on YouTube have skyrocketed, making it one of the most popular queries on the site.

Clearly, a viral video hit like the JK Wedding Entrance Dance, which has been viewed over 12 millions times, has the power to sell music.

Viral video hits are few and far between, though, so it could be a mistake to try and draw conclusions from this one. For every JK Wedding Entrance Dance, there are millions of YouTube videos that get only a few views.

What do you think? Is the JK Wedding Entrance Dance video an example of how companies should be capitalizing on user-generated video, or is it just an extreme case?