How much has Kate Bush made from the recent “Running Up That Hill” phenomenon? A lot.
Ever since that scene in season four of Stranger Things in which Max is seen listening to Kate Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill,” this 37-year-old track has taken on a viral life rivaling COVID–without all the suffering and death, of course.
It’s become a streaming sensation as well as topping charts (Billboard, the UK singles chart, iTunes, Spotify) around the planet. So the natural question might be “How much money is Kate making from all this?”
A lot.
According to Luminate, the company that keeps tabs on the health of music sales and streaming, reports that between May 27 (I think that was when the song appeared in Stranger Things) and June 23, Kate earned US$2.3 million in streaming royalties. And that seems to be just from the US alone.
You can bet that music supervisors are being inundated with entreaties from rightsholders to use their songs in TV shows and movies. Kate’s situation might be rare, but damn, it’s paid off.
Hey Alan, can you possibly elaborate on this? I was always under the impression (mostly from this website), that streaming royalties from Spotify, etc are very small for artists.
Oh, unless you mean streaming royalties from streaming stranger things?
If you read these articles, the song has been streamed in such numbers, it seems quite likely. On Spotify globally around June 17, the song had been streamed 57 million times. That’s not counting all the other streaming services out there in the world, plus streaming the music video on channels like YouTube. It’s also suspected that she retains nearly 80% of any royalties on the song because she owns full copyright.
https://fortune.com/2022/07/07/kate-bush-running-up-that-hill-stranger-things/
https://fortune.com/2022/07/07/kate-bush-running-up-that-hill-stranger-things/