Whether you are familiar with “Barbenheimer” or have listened to Barbie The Album, it’s undeniable that Barbie is a cultural phenomenon that’s taking over the world. Barbie The Album has a star-studded lineup of artists – spanning from Dua Lipa’s pop hit “Dance The Night” to Billie Eilish’s piano ballad “What Was I Made For?” It even included a Ken-ergetic ballad by Ryan Gosling, which earned him a spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart with “I’m Just Ken”. In its first week of release, the soundtrack earned 89.1m in On-Demand Audio (ODA) streams in the U.S., with “Barbie World” by Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice & Aqua driving most of the streams with 20.3m ODA streams (week ending 07/27/23). Globally, the soundtrack earned 235.9m in On-Demand Audio (ODA) streams during the first week of release. Using Luminate’s Film & TV data to look at the film’s box office numbers globally, countries such as the UK and Brazil made a huge impact to both box office revenue and streaming during opening weekend.
Some songs receiving a streaming boost from the film are not actually featured on the official soundtrack release. For example, though the Brandi Carlile and Catherine Carlile cover version of “Closer to Fine” appears on the Barbie Best Weekend Ever deluxe version of the soundtrack, the original 1989 folk-rock hit from Indigo Girls does not. Yet, listeners are seeking out the Indigo Girls’ original version and creating lifts for the deeper Indigo Girls catalog as well. Looking at the chart below, there is a clear spike in ODA streams for both the track as well as Indigo Girls’ remaining catalog during release week.
Leading up to the Barbie release this year, “Closer to Fine” was streaming on average 220k in ODA streams per week. However, during the week of the Barbie release, the song was streamed 690k times, over three times the average. Outside of “Closer to Fine”, Indigo Girls’ remaining catalog had a +36% increase in ODA streams when comparing the week before and the week of the Barbie premiere.
How Barbie Impacts Music Discovery
Often, movies can be a catalyst for discovering new music and artists, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen through the Barbie movie. Barbie is especially a great launching pad for music discovery, as this film’s targets females across multiple age groups, especially Gen Zers & Millennials. According to the Luminate Insights Artist & Genre Tracker*:
Gen Z and Millennial females are 16% more likely to seek out new music in comparison to the general population
30% of Gen Z and Millennial females discover new music and artists through movies/movie soundtracks, which makes them 15% more likely than the population
With Barbie still in theaters, both our consumption and research data suggests that songs from the soundtrack as well as songs featured in the movie will continue to pick up streams in the weeks ahead.
Source:
*Luminate Artist & Genre Tracker, Wave 7-8
