Is breaking up good for business? It can be, at least in the short term, as the members of Daft Punk are (separately) finding out.
On the day the duo’s split was announced Monday, total single-day on-demand streams for the duo’s catalog amounted to 5,025,000… more than five times Sunday’s figure, which was 854,100. That comes from figures provided to PvNew by Alpha Data, offering an early indicator of just how big Daft Punk’s surge may be as the week goes on.
The duo’s publicist confirmed Monday morning that the helmets are being retired after a 23-year run from the pair. Even though Daft Punk had been recently inactive, this was such a headline-making development that fans went right to their DSPs to celebrate or mourn the visually anonymous Frenchmen going separate ways.
The top song benefitting from that increase, perhaps predictably, was “Get Lucky,” the 2013 smash that featured Pharrell Williams. It had 429,800 streams on Monday, up from 153,000 the day before.
The bump was more pronounced on songs that don’t usually get as much on-demand play as “Get Lucky.” The second most active song in the pair’s catalog, “One More Time,” went up from 89,000 to 414,000 streams between Sunday and Monday. The increase for their currently third most popular tune, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” took it from 57,500 plays on Sunday to 297,000 the day of the announcement.
The popularity of songs in their catalog was well dispersed all around. Altogether, Daft Punk had a dozen songs surpass the 100,000 streams mark on Monday, versus only “Get Lucky” that topped 100K the previous day. A whopping 84 songs accrued more than 10,000 streams the day of the breakup announcement, whereas only 20 songs had hit the 10K mark on Sunday.
It wasn’t necessarily the case that Daft Punk’s most recent and/or most Grammy-winning recordings were the biggest beneficiaries across the board.
The top streaming album for Daft Punk is “Discovery,” released in 2001. Its songs accrued 1,542,000 streams on Monday, versus just 292,000 the day before. Their final studio album, 2013’s “Random Access Memories” (the one that included “Get Lucky”), came in second. That release’s songs racked up 1,243,000 streams Monday, a massive jump from 178,000 on Sunday.
Those were the only two albums to surpass a million streams each in a day, but some other collections also did exceptionally well Monday, like the 1997 debut “Homework,” which went from 99,000 streams Sunday to 810,000 the following day — a more than eight-fold increase after the breakup announcement.
Song sales increased Monday as well, but the overall numbers were inconsequential compared to streaming figures. Per Alpha Data, the duo sold 2,800 digital tracks on Monday, compared to 194 the day before.
Pandora broke out its own results Wednesday for the duo’s surge. Daft Punk’s station adds on Pandora have increased 1,546% since the Monday morning announcement, according to a spokesperson. Overall Pandora streams have up 225%, with many users accessing the service’s Daft Punk A-to-Z playlist, and “thumbs up” have increased by 71%.
How news of the breakup may elevate Daft Punk’s oldies to compete with current hits will ultimately be seen when the next charts are revealed this coming Monday.
