The Barbie soundtrack turns the charts pink

The Future. Barbie isn’t just a hit on the big screen; it’s a hit on Spotify. The movie’s soundtrack, which features a range of styles and genres, boosted the profiles of every artist and may be the most popular movie soundtrack since the Kendrick Lamar-produced album for Black Panther. With movies making soundtracks greater than the sum of their parts, the best way for artists to break through the noise may be by being on the big screen.

Box office bops
Barbie is bringing back the hit movie soundtrack, reports Bloomberg.

• Barbie: The Album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart and scored substantial physical sales with the release of pink vinyl and even cassettes.
• Featured artists such as Karol G, FIFTY FIFTY, and Tame Impala all had huge boosts on streaming.
• “Barbie World” — both the original single from Aqua and the remix by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice — were crowned as TikTok’s songs of the summer.
• The big single from the Barbie album, Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night,” hit 200 million streams on Spotify and 78 million views on YouTube.
• Even Matchbox Twenty, which isn’t featured on the album but is in the movie, charted on Billboard for the first time in 25 years.

And having a song on a hit movie soundtrack isn’t just great marketing and a boost in listenership, it’s lucrative in and of itself. The revenue from licensing songs in movies and shows dubbed “synchronization royalties” grew 22% last year and represented 2.4% of the music industry’s global market — a whopping $640.4 million.

There’s nothing quite as impactful as being the soundtrack to a great cinematic moment.