Dr. Dre Had a ‘Cultural Moment’ With Apple Music Streams Up 500% After Halftime Show
Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar all saw upticks in their concurrent listeners too.
The 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show this Sunday (Feb. 13) was met with widespread praise, as Dr. Dre curated a hip-hop-inspired lineup of artists that included Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, 50 Cent and Kendrick Lamar performing hits from their catalog. And according to metrics released by Apple Music exclusively to Billboard, the performances led to increased global concurrent listening for each of the artists involved.
Apple Music defines concurrent listeners as the number of listeners streaming a particular song from a particular artist at the same time, and considers large jumps in concurrent listeners to be indicative of a “cultural moment.” Using that definition, the Halftime Show certainly qualified: concurrent global listeners for Dr. Dre jumped almost 500% immediately after the show, according to Apple Music, while Blige’s concurrent listeners ballooned 200%.
For the other performers at the Halftime Show, the biggest jumps in concurrent listenership occurred on Monday (Feb. 14), when concurrent listeners jumped 150% for Snoop Dogg, 130% for Lamar and 120% for Eminem. The service did not provide numbers for 50 Cent — a surprise guest, though not a shocking one given his own long history with Dr. Dre in particular — nor underlying numbers to illustrate how many streams or listeners those percentage increases represent.
But other data has also emerged to help flesh out the gains seen by the performers: According to MRC Data, songs performed during the Halftime Show, which also included tracks by 2Pac and briefly-performed snippets, sold 62,000 downloads collectively in the U.S. on Feb. 13 and 14, a boost of 775% over the prior two days. (Important to note: Apple Music’s numbers are global; MRC Data’s are U.S.-only.) Streaming gains from other providers sent to MRC Data will be reported in the coming days.
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