LONDON - A music video by makers of the cult internet soap The Guild has ripped apart the likes of Beyonce and Black Eyed Peas to capture the number one slot in the UK iTunes chart.

(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar was written to popularise the third series of the show, a tale of people playing an online role-playing game.

The lyrics have lines like: “You’ll never see my actual face. Our love will be in virtual space.”

Almost half a million people have accessed the video since its upload on Monday. The song itself occupies the second position in the Amazon US download chart.

Felicia Day, actress and writer of The Guild, was “a little bit surprised” by the phenomenal success of the track, and said the response by the audience had been “very cool”.

The BBC quoted Day as saying: “We beat the establishment and it fills me with glee.

“One of the things that drives me is to do things differently…. Most people would be working with a label and going through a lot of hoops.

“I think our success empowers everybody who feels like they can’t get their art out there.”

Day who plays Codex in the award-winning sitcom came up with the song when she was writing scripts for the new series, which is financed and distributed by Microsoft via Xbox Marketplace.

“We do 12 episodes per series, and we always owe an extra video for our Xbox order, and I thought ‘wouldn’t it be fun to do something musical? I was listening to really bad 1990s dance songs - C+C Music Factory, Stacey Q - and that was my inspiration,” she said.

TV scriptwriter Jed Whedon composed the music for the number.

The track also features an “intricate and clearly masterful” rap by The Guild co-stars Jeff Lewis and Sandeep Parikh. (ANI)