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In the TikTok era, homemade remixes of songs — typically single tracks that have been sped up or slowed down, or two tracks mashed together — have become ever more popular. Increasingly, they are driving viral trends on the platform and garnering streams off of it.
Just how popular? In April, Larry Mills, senior vp of sales at the digital rights tech company Pex, wrote that Pex’s tech found “hundreds of millions of modified audio tracks distributed from July 2021 to March 2023,” which appeared on TikTok, SoundCloud, Audiomack, YouTube, Instagram and more.
On Wednesday (Nov. 1), Mills shared the results of a new Pex analysis — expanded to include streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and Tidal — estimating that “at least 1% of all songs on [streaming platforms] are modified audio.”
“We’re talking more than 1 million unlicensed, manipulated songs that are diverting revenue away from rightsholders this very minute,” Mills wrote, pointing to homemade re-works of tracks by Halsey or One Republic that have amassed millions of plays. “These can generate millions in cumulative revenue for the uploaders instead of the correct rightsholders.”
Labels try to execute a tricky balancing act with user-generated remixes. They usually strike down the most popular unauthorized reworks on streaming services and move to release their own official versions in an attempt to pull those plays in-house. But they also find ways to encourage fan remixing, because it remains an effective form of music marketing at a time when most promotional strategies have proved toothless. “Rights holders understand that this process is inevitable, and it’s one of the best ways to bring new life to tracks,” Meng Ru Kuok, CEO of music technology company BandLab, said to Billboard earlier this year.
Mills argues that the industry needs a better system for tracking user-generated remixes and making sure royalties are going into the right pockets. “While these hyper-speed remixes may make songs go viral,” he wrote in April, “they’re also capable of diverting royalty payments away from rights holders and into the hands of other creators.”
Since Pex sells technology for identifying all this modified audio, it’s not exactly an unbiased party. But it’s notable that streaming services and distributors don’t have the best track record when it comes to keeping unauthorized content of any kind off their platforms.
It hasn’t been unusual to find leaked songs — especially from rappers with impassioned fan bases like Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert — on Spotify, where leaked tracks can often be found climbing the viral chart, or TikTok. An unreleased Pink Pantheress song sampling Michael Jackson’s classic “Off the Wall” is currently hiding in plain sight on Spotify, masquerading as a podcast.
“Historically, streaming services don’t have an economic incentive to actually care about that,” Deezer CEO Jeronimo Folgueira told Billboard earlier this year. “We don’t care whether you listen to the original Drake, fake Drake, or a recording of the rain. We just want you to pay $10.99.” Folgueira called that incentive structure “actually a bad thing for the industry.”
In addition, many of the distribution companies that act as middlemen between artists and labels and the streaming services operate on a volume model — the more content they upload, the more money they make — which means it’s not in their financial interest to look closely at what they send along to streaming services.
However, the drive to improve this system has taken on new urgency this year. Rights holders and streaming services are going back and forth over how streaming payments should work and whether “an Ed Sheeran stream is worth exactly the same as a stream of rain falling on the roof,” as Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl told financial analysts in May. As the industry starts to move to a system where all streams are no longer created equal, it becomes increasingly important to know exactly what’s on these platforms so it can sort different streams into different buckets.
In addition, the advance of artificial intelligence-driven technology has allowed for easily accessible and accurate-sounding voice-cloning, which has alarmed some executives and artists in a way that sped-up remixes have not. “In our conversations with the labels, we heard that some artists are really pissed about this stuff,” says Geraldo Ramos, co-founder/CEO of the music-tech company Moises. “They’re calling their label to say, ‘Hey, it isn’t acceptable, my voice is everywhere.’”
This presents new challenges, but also perhaps means new opportunities for digital fingerprint technology companies, whether that’s stalwarts like Audible Magic or newer players like Pex. “With AI, just think how much the creation of derivative works is going to exponentially grow — how many covers are going to get created, how many remixes are gonna get created,” Audible Magic CEO Kuni Takahashi told Billboard this summer. “The scale of what we’re trying to identify and the pace of change is going to keep getting faster.”
Apple TV+ announced a new three-part documentary series delving into the 1980 murder of late Beatle John Lennon. With narration from 24 star Kiefer Sutherland, John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial promises to present exclusive eyewitness interviews and previously unseen crime scene photos that will shed “new light on the life and murder” of the […]
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Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite is honoring the late Matthew Perry with a special tribute titled Matthew Perry: Thanks for Being a Friend. The 30-minute program is scheduled to air Sunday (Nov. 5) at 10 p.m. ET/PT and will be followed by “fan favorite” episodes of Friends with Perry as his hilariously sarcastic character Chandler Bing.
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Viewers will have the opportunity to watch never-before-seen interviews with Perry as well as behind-the-scenes footage from his time on Friends. The channel will also be running reruns of the hit sitcom leading up to the tribute special so you can revisit some of your favorite moments from the series.
You can tune into the live special through your cable provider — just go to the Nickelodeon channel, which you can find through your TV provider’s guide.
Don’t have cable? We recommend trying out DirecTV Stream, which has the Nick channel and offers a five-day free trial. Plus, right now you can take advantage of the platform’s $30 off promo that’ll take $10 off your plan for the first three months. Click here or the button below to start your free trial now.
HBO’s streaming platform Max also plans to put a tribute to the 54-year-old actor at the start of each episode of Friends that will read “In memory of Matthew Perry.”
Keep reading to learn the streaming options to watch the Nick at Nite tribute and rewatch Friends.
How to Watch Friends & Matthew Perry: Thanks for Being a Friend
If you don’t have cable, then an HD antenna like these ones here on Amazon might be able to stream Nick at Nite live. If not, then DirecTV Stream will give you a 5-day free trial to watch reruns of Friends and Matthew Perry: Thanks for Being a Friend without having to spend hundreds of dollars on cable.
Looking for more affordable options? FuboTV offers Nickelodeon as one of its channels as well as 7-day free trial, which means you can watch the special and more for free. After the trial is over, you’ll be charged the normal subscription price based on the plan you choose. Plans start at $74.99/month and offer a variety of live news, sports and entertainment channels, DVR storage and the ability to watch on at least 10 screens at a time.
Hulu + Live TV is the best option if you’re looking for the most programming for a fraction of the cost. Not only will you have a 30-day free trial, but you’ll also get access to the entire Hulu library and hundreds of live TV channels including Nickelodeon. If you’re a fan of bundling you can save even more money by adding ESPN+ and Disney+ to your plan for $81.99/month.
How to Watch Friends
The best way to rewatch episodes of Friends as well as the 2021 reunion special is through Max, HBO’s streaming service. Right now, you can take advantage of Prime Video‘s 7-day free-trial, which will give you access to all the content on Max as well as everything the Prime Video library has to offer. Once the free-trial is over you’ll be charged the normal subscription price of $15.99/month.
You’ll need to be a Prime member in order to get the 7-day free-trial. If you already have a subscription you just need to add the channel to your subscription under the Prime Video channel store.
Not subscribed? Amazon offers a 30-day free trial that’ll give you access to Prime Video as well as additional Prime member benefits like one-day free shipping, exclusive Prime member-only deals, grocery delivery, Prime Premiere and more. Click here to start your free trial now.
Prefer to own the series on DVD? Amazon is currently offering the complete series on sale for 41% off, which you can shop below.
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Enjoy all 10 seasons of NBC’s award-winning sitcom series in a 25th anniversary collectors edition. Inside you’ll find 32 disc with every episode from the show, so you can rewatch and relive some of the most iconic episodes and scenes that still captivate audiences today.
Why are hip-hop and R&B still popular streaming-wise but less so on the live music front? How can superfans and generative AI help further music industry growth? Those are just two of the hot topics addressed in Trapital’s second annual report on major trends in music, media and hip-hop. Presented by the ticketing company DICE, 2023’s The Trapital Report is being released today (Oct. 31) in tandem with Billboard‘s exclusive first-look preview.
“This report is for the key decision makers in music, media and entertainment, the executives, founders and investors in the space,” Trapital founder Dan Runcie tells Billboard. “These are the people who are working actively to serve the artists that they work with. They’re working actively to provide an experience to the end consumers as well as fans. And to do that they need to be as close as possible to the current trends that are happening within the actual revenue. But looking fast forward, what are the things that they need to invest their time and money in? How do they better understand this audience? Our report is able to offer those insights.”
The report begins with a look at the slowing growth of streaming. While music streaming revenue was $17.5B in 2022 versus $15.7B in 2021, that only represents 11% growth. That percentage figure is down from 24%, 19% and 29% in prior years, per Trapital’s analysis of data from Luminate, MRC, Nielsen and the IFPI Global Music Report 2022.
Explains Runcie, “Streaming growth has started to slow down from a revenue perspective year over year, especially from the heights that we had seen in the pandemic. That has sparked a lot of industry discussions about how to split the pie like pushes to raise prices and increase the payouts to certain types of artists; reducing the noise and fraud. But I do think that the two big opportunities that the industry has to grow the overall pie is to look at the superfan and lean into generative AI.”
“I do think even alone on the streaming services, they have a lot of valuable data and understanding as to who the superfans are,” says Runcie. “And as well to all of the combinations of things that can be offered, whether it’s exclusive access to fans, community input … I think there are different ways to have different tiers to enable that.”
Acknowledging the intense discussions emanating over the use of generative AI, Runcie says the emerging technology represents another growth opportunity by increasing derivative work.
“Anytime in the history of recorded music, derivative work grows and that overall demand grows the pie,” he explains. “And it can do that because the underlying asset that a lot of popular derivative work comes from is work that the record labels already own. It’s what the rights holders already have. So being able to find the right attribution, being able to do it in a way that acknowledges both the safety and rights that the artists and the rights holders have, I think all of this is possible if you accept the fact that this isn’t necessarily a genie that’s going to go back in the bottle. It’s still very early, but no different than YouTube being able to figure out Content ID. The same can be possible for generative AI and allowing superfans to create making music, anything that enables that as that continues to grow, it only adds more value adds to the artists and the rights holders who have the valuable intellectual property.”
On the hip-hop front, the report notes the genre’s total global revenue rose slightly between 2021 ($2.72B) and 2022 ($2.78B). But its share of total revenue has dipped from 27.7% in 2021 to 26.8% in 2022. And while only three rap albums have hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2023 — Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape, Travis Scott’s Utopia and Drake’s For All the Dogs — hip-hop still reigns as the top genre. It accounts for 33% of all albums on the Billboard 200, more than twice pop and rock combined at 16% each.
However, in the report section titled “From URL to IRL” it points out the glaring fact that despite hip-hop and R&B’s popularity in terms of streaming and social media, pop and rock still command the live music front: 27% of concert revenue/33% of streaming revenue in the U.S. versus 11% of concert revenue/27% of streaming revenue for R&B/hip-hop according to Trapital’s analysis of stats from Pollstar and Luminate.
The report explains the disconnect is related to several factors. Among them: that hip-hop artists didn’t consistently begin touring on a global arena level until the 2000s; the hesitancy on the part of concert promoters to book rap acts owing to violence and safety concerns even though “rock acts often had worse violence issues”; younger fan bases; and the fact that many hip-hop and R&B acts “have clustered around larger festivals like Rolling Loud, the club circuit and other festival appearances” which are more economical than paying for expensive concert tickets.
“This is something I’ve been eager to dig into,” says Runcie. “And I’m glad we were able to do it with this report. When you transition from stream URL to in real life, hip-hop and R&B don’t necessarily dominate in the same way. Even though we’ve seen hip-hop and R&B artists that have done arena tours like Drake, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar and SZA, other hip-hop/R&B artists who’ve had very popular music haven’t quite gotten to that same point on the live music side.”
To that point, the report includes a breakdown of which artists can sell out a tour at each venue level. The list encompasses 30+ stadiums (Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga), 10K+ arenas (SZA, Lizzo, Travis Scott, Kendrick Lamar, Miley Cyrus), 5K+ amphitheatres (Lil Uzi Vert, Janelle Monae, Wiz Khalifa, Lil Baby, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie) and 2K+ ballrooms (Latto, Chloe Baily, Yeat, Denzel Curry, Glorilla).
Also of interest in The Trapital Report is a look at Latin music’s popularity, the largest DSPs and most valuable private companies, indie artist case stories, audience profiles, the most valuable songs streamed on Spotify and YouTube and the top 1% of artists in streaming. According to Runcie, the full reports features detailed analyses on streaming revenue, music genre trends, live entertainment, short-form video, chart analysis among other topics.
For more information, visit trapital.co/report
As part of our continuing efforts to serve the music industry and its creators, Billboard now features a royalty calculator for Spotify and Apple Music for readers. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Created by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a legal and consulting firm that specializes in […]
As part of our continuing efforts to serve the music industry and its creators, Billboard now features a royalty calculator for Spotify and Apple Music for readers. The calculator below was created by Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, a legal and consulting firm that specializes in music industry law; and is based on the firm’s analysis […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Five Nights at Freddy’s popularity as a video game franchise has earned it a movie adaptation, which is premiering in theaters and on streaming on Friday (Oct. 27). You can still get tickets to see it on the big screen through Cinemark and Fandango. If you prefer to watch the horror movie with the lights on, Peacock has it available to stream online.
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The film stars Josh Hutcherson (The Hunger Games) as Mike, a security guard who begins working at the children’s pizza restaurant Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria. During the day, the cute animatronics seem harmless, but as Mike spends his first night on duty, he begins to realize more sinister things are at play.
Five Nights at Freddy’s comes from Blumhouse Productions and also stars Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard. The animatronic characters were created by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop
Keep reading to learn the streaming options.
How to Watch Five Nights At Freddy’s
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a Peacock original film that can be seen in theaters or exclusively on the Peacock platform. If you already have a Peacock subscription, then you can watch the new movie for no additional cost — just log into your account and find it under new releases.
Don’t have a subscription? Peacock may not have a free-trial, but it is one of the more affordable streaming platforms on the market with plans starting at $5.99/month. Click here or the button below to sign-up now.
Peacock has two subscription plans to choose from: Premium or Premium Plus. The Premium plan is $59.99/month and is the ad-supported subscription that includes over 80,000 hours of sports, TV and movies along with new, exclusive and original content, live sports and events, access to current NBC and Bravo shows and over 50 always-on channels. Premium Plus is $11.99/month and comes with everything in the Premium plan without ads, the ability to download and watch content offline and your local NBC channel live 24/7.
Looking for additional savings? If you sign-up for an annual plan you’ll save money by paying for the cost of 10 months instead of 12.
Besides Five Nights at Freddy’s, Peacock gives you access to library filled with hundreds of titles, live events and exclusives such as Bupkis, Mrs. Davis, Poker Face, Bel-Air, Poker Face, Yellowstone, The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip, Vanderpump Rules, Queens Court, The Traitors, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, Sick, Based on a True Story, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and other Peacock Originals in addition to NBC and Bravo shows, sports and more.
Anyone new to the game can try it out for themselves through a complete set of the video game series for only $26.
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Enjoy playing games 1-4 and delve into the lore of the original Five Nights at Freddy’s video games. You’ll be the main character this time as you fight to survive a night alone on guard. It’s available in three editions: Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One.
Check below to watch the trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s.
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French music streaming company Deezer added 500,000 subscribers in the third quarter, helping its revenues improve by 4.8% (5.5% at constant currency) to 120.7 million euros ($131.4 million), the company announced Thursday (Oct. 26).
“We are back to meaningful subscriber growth and secured top line acceleration starting in Q4 thanks to the implementation of a new wave of price increases, as well as the ongoing growth of new partnerships,” said CEO Jeronimo Folgueira in a statement.
A relatively small music subscription service, Deezer has recently taken an outsized position of influence with its partnership with Universal Music Group to revamp how it calculates artist royalties and addresses fraud. The “artist-centric” system was announced in September and will be implemented in France in the current quarter, to be followed by additional markets. Around half of Deezer’s streams are already running on the new model, the company said Thursday.
While direct subscriptions remained flat at 5.6 million, subscribers from partnerships grew from 3.8 million to 4.3 million. Deezer said it had “very strong initial subscriber growth” in Brazil and Mexico stemming from its partnership with Uruguay-based e-commerce giant Mercado Libre. The third quarter was also the first full quarter for which Deezer managed the Sonos Radio service. Deezer also powers the music streaming in RTL+, a multimedia platform launched by RTL Germany that has 4.5 million subscribers, according to RTL’s website.
Revenue from direct subscribers grew 3.3% to 71.7 million euros ($78 million). Revenue from partnerships increased 11.9% to 34.2 million euros ($37.2 million). Other revenue (advertising and ancillary revenue) decreased 16% to 4.1 million euros ($4.5 million).
France accounted for 59% of Deezer’s revenue in the quarter compared to 60% in the prior-year period. Direct subscribers in France increased by 200,000 while subscribers elsewhere decreased by an equal amount.
Direct subscribers are more lucrative than partnerships on a per-subscriber basis. Direct subscriber ARPU (average revenue per user) rose 3.4% to 4.9 euros ($5.33) while partnerships ARPU improved 10.6% to 2.9 euros ($3.16). Direct subscriber ARPU will get a further boost from a price increase instituted on Sept. 21 for all new subscribers in France, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands. For all current direct subscribers, the increase will progressively roll out starting on Oct. 24.
Deezer reiterated its previous guidance of 7% to 10% revenue growth for the full year and a “significant reduction” in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the second half of the year.
Q3 2023 financial metrics:
Revenue grew 4.8% (5.5% at constant currency) to 120.7 million euros ($131.4 million).
Total subscribers grew 4.9% to 9.9 million.
Direct subscribers were flat at 5.6 million. Subscribers from partnerships grew by 500,000 to 4.3 million.
ARPU from direct subscribers grew 3.4% to 4.9 euros ($5.33).
ARPU from partnerships grew 10.6% to 2.9 euros ($3.16).
Led by strong subscription growth and a dominant quarter from Taylor Swift, along with strong sales of releases by Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and Seventeen, Universal Music Group (UMG) grew revenue 3.3% (9.9% at constant currency) to 2.75 billion euros ($3 billion at the period’s average exchange rate) in the third quarter, the company announced Thursday (Oct. 26).
UMG will get another boost this quarter from Swift’s release of the re-recorded version of her 2014 album, 1989, on Friday. “She is a phenomena,” said UMG chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge, listing a string of global chart successes of Swift’s previous 2023 album of re-recordings, Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), released in July. “This level of performance can only really be described as truly astonishing.”
UMG’s fourth quarter will also benefit from the new release of an unreleased track by The Beatles, “Now and Then,” on Nov. 2. “Now and Then” was written by John Lennon in the late ‘70s and just recently finished by the band’s remaining members, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. “The fact that more than four decades after its original recording, we can use the latest technology to bring this recording everywhere is truly remarkable and something that we’re very proud of,” said Grainge.
Third-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EDITDA) increased 5.1%, or 11.3% at constant currency, to 581 million euros ($632 million), and adjusted EBITDA margin improved 0.3 percentage points to 21.1%.
The company’s recorded music segment declined 1.1% to $2.04 billion ($2.2 billion), a 5.2% increase at constant currency (or an 8.9% increase excluding a 71 million euro legal settlement recognized in the prior-year quarter). Subscription revenue grew 6.7% (13% at constant currency), despite not yet receiving a boost from recent price increases at Spotify and YouTube Music. Those benefits are expected to be felt in the fourth quarter, said CFO Boyd Muir, who noted that “each of these services raised prices in certain markets, and on certain plans, not across all subscribers.” YouTube, which Muir said “has a particularly global subscriber base,” raised prices first in the United States and other markets in the following weeks. As a result, “the benefit will initially be more limited.”
Recorded music’s ad-supported streaming revenue grew 5%, the same as the previous quarter. UMG remains “cautious” about ad-supported growth in the coming quarters, said Muir. Results in any quarter come from a mix of fixed and variable deal structures, he explained, meaning UMG’s results aren’t a close reflection of trends in the advertising market. “We do, however, continue to see opportunities for improved deal terms and product innovation driving higher levels of growth in this business over the medium term,” he said.
Downloads and other digital revenue declined 56.9% (53.2% at constant currency) due to the prior-year legal settlement and a broad decline in download sales. Licensing and other revenue declined 11.8% (6.9% at constant currency) due to a strong prior-year quarter that benefitted from artists’ return to touring as the concert business recovered from pandemic-era shutdowns.
Music publishing revenue grew 17.5% (24.6% at constant currency) to 491 million euros ($534 million). Excluding a 53 million euro ($58 million) catch-up payment in the music publishing segment related to the Copyright Royalty Board’s (CRB) Phonorecords III ruling for streaming royalties from 2018 to 2022, publishing revenue improved 4.8% (11.2% at constant currency).
Publishing’s digital revenue grew 25.6% (33.6% at constant currency) on strong streaming and subscription growth and the CRB III catch-up payment. Synch revenue declined 3.5% (and grew 3.8% at constant currency) while mechanical revenue was stable.
Revenue growth “is beyond our expectation and guidance,” said Muir, while noting that “the revenues that are incremental to our expected growth are actually coming from lower-margin areas of our business.” In the third quarter, 75% of UMG’s revenue above analyst’s consensus expectations came from merchandise and physical products. “They are EBITDA-accretive, but margin-dilutive of the business segments we must pursue,” said Muir. UMG still expects a one-point improvement in adjusted EBITDA in calendar year 2023.
Revenue grew 3.3% (9.1% at constant currency) to 2.75 billion euros ($3 billion).
Recorded music revenue declined 1.1% to $2.04 billion ($2.2 billion), a 5.2% increase at constant currency.
Publishing revenue grew 25.6% (33.6% at constant currency), or 4.8% (11.2% at constant currency) excluding a CRB III retroactive royalty adjustment.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 5.1%, or 11.3% at constant currency, to 581 million euros ($632 million).
Adjusted EBITDA margin improved 0.3 percentage points to 21.1%.
This time every year, music’s biggest stars unleash carefully constructed marketing campaigns for new Christmas music, hoping to join Bing Crosby and Mariah Carey on the lucrative list of holiday classics. Duran Duran chose a different direction.
After dressing as top-hatted ghouls and covering Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” and The Specials’ “Ghost Town” at the Wynn Las Vegas casino last Halloween, the veteran U.K. band recorded a themed album, Danse Macabre, which is due Oct. 27. “Funnily enough, I can’t think of many Christmas songs that I like, apart from the few obvious ones,” keyboardist Nick Rhodes says. “But Halloween, I can think of plenty of songs I love. It’s the mood and the chaos and the dark spirit of excitement about it.”
For decades, Halloween’s soundtrack has come from a reliable archive of catalog hits: Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” (1984), Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” (1982), Ray Parker Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” (1984), Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” (1978) and, of course, Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ undead “Monster Mash” (1962). But in recent years, thanks to TikTok memes, Netflix and Disney synchs and music streaming, newer songs have joined the pantheon, from Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary,” which went viral after TikTok users spliced it into a dance clip from Netflix’s 2022 hit Wednesday, to LVCRFT’s “Skeleton Sam,” a spooky novelty track engineered by hit songwriters who aspire to update the Halloween music canon.
“There’s room in the marketplace for more than just ‘Monster Mash’ and ‘Ghostbusters,’ ” says Kay Anderson, vp of marketing for Craft Recordings, the Concord catalog label that represents late singer Andrew Gold, including his meme-friendly ’90s Halloween-season hit, “Spooky Scary Skeletons.” “The demand is there, and the momentum for Halloween-themed content kicks off earlier each year.”
When singer-songwriter Evan Bogart was a kid, his mother threw bobbing-for-apples Halloween parties and put dry ice in the pool to create ghostly smoke. By 2018, the son of Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart was a hit songwriter for Lizzo, Rihanna, Beyoncé and others and, as he recalls, his horror movie-obsessed friends wondered: “Why isn’t there any f—ing Halloween music? We’ve been listening to the same stuff since we were kids: Rockwell, The Specials, Warren Zevon, Ray Parker, Oingo Boingo. Most of it’s decades old.” They formed a collective, LVCRFT, and made an album of all-new music, 2019’s This Is Halloween Vol. 1, which included “Skeleton Sam.” The single has since racked up more than 8.5 million on-demand audio streams, according to Luminate, and its Oct. 31 streams increased from 57,343 in 2019 to 569,313 last year. LVCRFT followed the album up with new installments every year.
At the same time, Kat Basolo, senior vp of creative synch for Bogart’s publisher, Kobalt, had been thinking up song ideas to pitch to Freeform, Disney’s streaming channel for young adults. When Bogart mentioned his Halloween music obsession to Basolo, she encouraged him to cover songs from Kobalt’s catalog for Freeform’s annual, heavily promoted “31 Nights of Halloween” campaign. Kobalt also represents Gold, and LVCRFT chose “Spooky Scary Skeletons” and “It Must Be Halloween,” which the Disney channel wound up licensing. “It was very successful,” Basolo says. “That became a well we would keep tapping into.”
In Basolo’s view, the resurgence of new Halloween tracks is, at least in part, a synch phenomenon: Horror movies and spooky shows such as Wednesday, American Horror Story, the Hocus Pocus franchise and this year’s Haunted Mansion remake have led to more topical placement opportunities for artists, labels and publishers. “There’s a lot of content out there that people are constantly clamoring for because they’re genuinely Halloween fans,” she says. “Halloween is a very popular holiday for a reason, and people tend to have a cult-like affinity. They look for content out there that has themes that are adjacent.”
Streaming numbers for “Spooky Scary Skeletons,” “Skeleton Sam” and other Halloween hits may not be as big as those of “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but they add up. “Bloody Mary” never charted when Gaga released it in 2011, but after the Wednesday-related TikTok phenomenon, it hit No. 68 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, scoring over 412 million plays on Spotify and placement in the service’s Halloween Party playlist, which has 981,000 likes. “Bloody Mary” streams grew from 128,708 on Oct. 31, 2019 to 166,893 on October 31, 2022, an increase of 29.7%. However, from October 1-9, 2023, the streams have totaled 2.04 million, according to Luminate.
Since the pandemic, Spotify’s playlist team has noticed what Talia Kraines, the services’ senior editor, pop, describes as “massive spikes on our Halloween playlists” earlier and earlier each year. One enduring seasonal beneficiary of stay-at-home TikTok and binge-watching has been the Beetlejuice soundtrack — the popularity of Schitt’s Creek led to discovery of Catherine O’Hara’s other films, including Beetlejuice, which led to streaming Harry Belafonte’s classic “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).” “Labels have tended to focus on the classics. Catalog teams at labels are trying to go deeper and find more songs to pitch because the existing classics are so well covered,” Kraines says, pointing to September-October spikes for spooky-adjacent songs like Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy,” Rihanna’s “Disturbia” and the Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck.” “A lot of the new Halloween music is coming from real baby artists who don’t have that major label or publisher system in place.”
Even songs unrelated to Halloween, such as Ghost’s “Mary on a Cross,” which went viral a year ago, and Ava Max’s pop smash “Sweet but Psycho,” have landed on Spotify’s Halloween Party and other official streaming playlists this year. Rapper Ashnikko’s adult-oriented “Halloweenie” tracks, released from 2018 to 2021, have drawn roughly 67 million on-demand streams as of Oct. 9, according to Luminate.
“It takes years to mature a song like that into a classic,” says Mike Chester, executive vp of commerce and promotion at Warner Records, which represents Ashnikko. “It’s not ubiquitous like Christmas season, so you have to focus on the week leading up to Halloween and maximize that attention. It’s a pretty tight window, but it’s rabid in that moment.” Kobalt’s Basolo adds that Halloween synch prep begins earlier every year: “I’m looking at Halloween at the beginning of summer. It’s [about getting] ahead of the timeline and thinking about it a few months in advance.”
By contrast, Duran Duran never expected to make a Halloween album. The group’s ghoulish October 2022 Vegas show was a one-off, so spontaneous that singer Simon Le Bon had to put in extra work memorizing new lyrics, but it evolved into the upcoming album of covers and originals. “We hadn’t thought about it that much as any kind of business proposition — we thought we just wanted to do a Halloween album,” Rhodes says. “But one thing we definitely have on our side is that I’m not sure I know many other artists who’ve done a Halloween album. It’s a whole new genre.”