Bob Dylan Streaming Boom Highlights Biopic Bump

“A Complete Unknown” is the latest music biopic to rake in a slew of Oscar nominations. As a result of the film’s success, Bob Dylan saw a massive boost in music streams, according to Luminate data, averaging 7.7 million weekly on-demand U.S. streams before the film’s release to over 20 million streams the week after its Christmas Day premiere, a roughly 160% increase.

It’s not a stretch to assume that movies about beloved musicians might generate increased interest in their music, especially if that movie is well liked and an awards darling. But streaming data from Luminate shows a biopic can potentially do a lot more for an artist than inspire a short bump in listenership — regardless of whether the movie is a hit or a bomb.

Looking at global total streaming figures, Dylan was hovering between 3 million and 4 million per day in the weeks leading up to the film’s Dec. 25 U.S. debut. Following release, he shot well above 5 million daily streams, hitting a peak of 5.93 million on Dec. 31.

But the “biopic bump” didn’t just benefit Dylan. Daily streaming for Joan Baez and Pete Seeger, two instrumental (pun intended) figures both in the film and in the real-life Dylan’s world, also saw noticeable boosts post-biopic. Baez jumped from around 216,000 global streams on Dec. 1 to roughly 258,000 streams on the film’s release day to over 467,000 by Dec. 31 — an 81% increase within a month. Similarly, Seeger saw a 68% increase between Dec. 1 (39,090 streams) and New Year’s Eve (65,835).

The one artist of the main cast who didn’t have a streaming lift was Johnny Cash, but that may have been due to his comparatively smaller role in the film — and/or because he was already the most streamed artist of the bunch.

It’s worth pointing out that the most consistent points of praise for “Unknown” were the film’s stars Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro and Edward Norton for their respective portrayals of Dylan, Baez and Seeger, which earned each an Oscar nomination last week. Clearly, their compelling performances wooed the Academy, but they also inspired audiences to check out the original artists' music.

The global rollout of “Unknown” is still in progress, but its $60 million U.S. box office is already exceeding projections. Between the theatrical success and heaps of nominations, the film is so far on a similar trajectory as the 2018 Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

Historical U.S. streaming data for Queen shows not only a spike around the film’s release (110.2 million) but a similar jolt (102.5 million) around the time the Oscar nominations were announced as well as the Oscar ceremony itself, which saw Rami Malek win for his performance as Freddie Mercury.

But what’s more interesting about “Bohemian” is that Queen’s popularity sustained well beyond the film’s release and awards cycle, as weekly U.S. streaming numbers only started to fall back to pre-biopic levels in late 2024.

We also know for a fact that Queen effectively leveraged the attention from “Bohemian” to become a brand bigger than ever: Financial filings for Queen Productions Ltd. show total revenues surged from £22 million ($27.4 million USD today) in 2018 to £73 million ($91 million) in 2019 and then settling above £40 million in the following years.

And while, yes, Queen’s streaming numbers are finally coming back down to earth, the band themselves cashed out and left their legacy up to Sony following a $1.2 billion catalog sale last year, the largest acquisition of a musical artist’s body of work.

Ultimately, the biggest plus to an artist getting the biopic treatment is awareness: Old fans are reminded how good the music is, and new listeners might become fans after seeing the movie. Even if the movie underperforms at the box office or isn’t even particularly liked, there’s still potential to at least bring more people to the subject’s music.

Last year’s Amy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” is on the opposite end of “Bohemian” and “Unknown” in that it was critically panned, bombed at the box office and was absent from awards season. And yet, global streaming data shows not a spike for Winehouse’s music but a definite hump between the biopic’s U.K. and U.S. releases, followed by higher weekly totals for the rest of the year compared with pre-biopic levels.

Even as not a lot of people saw “Black” upon its release, the streaming data suggests that Winehouse fans may have gotten nostalgic for the late singer or those unfamiliar decided to check her out as the film made its promotional and theatrical run.

Given the There’s a strong chance Dylan will enjoy an extended surge of interest in his music as the movie continues its international rollout and the Oscars gear up for its 97th iteration in March.