Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ Sets a Streaming Record No Other 20th Century Solo Song Has Ever Reached

Months after ‘Michael’ hit theaters, the Michael Jackson biopic starring Jaafar Jackson is still generating headlines, and not just at the box office. The film’s ripple effect on Jackson’s music catalog has kept building long after its April premiere, with older tracks climbing charts they had not touched in decades.

That box office run alone has been staggering. The movie has become the highest-grossing music biopic in history, surpassing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ with $911.9 million at the global box office, and it also holds the record for the biggest domestic opening ever for a musical biopic. Jaafar Jackson, the real King of Pop’s nephew, plays the lead role, and the film charts his rise from fronting The Jackson 5 in the 1970s through the release of ‘Thriller’.

Now the music itself has hit a milestone of its own. ‘Billie Jean’ has crossed 3 billion streams on Spotify, making it the first song from the 20th century released by a solo artist to hit that mark, and putting it in rare company. As Twitter account Akhil Jackson pointed out, the track now sits alongside ‘Every Breath You Take’ by The Police and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen as only the third 20th century song of any kind to reach that threshold on the platform.

The climb to that number has been unusually fast. ‘Billie Jean’ had under 2 billion streams before ‘Michael’ arrived in theaters, and it added volume at a pace that consistently outpaced the platform’s biggest contemporary releases once the film opened.

The wider catalog tells a similar story. Jackson had roughly 68 million monthly listeners on Spotify just before the biopic opened, a figure that jumped to 73 million in the first week and has since settled above 100 million, with Music Business Worldwide reporting it at 108 million monthly listeners at last count. On the singles side, ‘Billie Jean’ hit its highest-ever single day stream count on May 15 with 6.028 million plays, briefly topping Spotify’s Daily Global chart.

The chart history behind all this is just as unusual. ‘Billie Jean’ reached number one on the Billboard Global 200 in May for the first time ever, arriving in its 144th week on the list and setting the record for the longest climb to the top spot in that chart’s history. Beyond Jackson’s solo catalog, songs like ‘Human Nature,’ ‘Man in the Mirror,’ ‘Beat It,’ and ‘Rock With You’ have also returned to the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.

There is real money behind the milestone too. Sony Music holds a 50 percent stake in Jackson’s publishing and recorded masters catalog through a deal valued at up to 1.5 billion dollars, meaning the streaming surge feeds directly into Sony’s own revenue. With the film still expanding internationally and inching toward a billion dollars worldwide, it looks like ‘Billie Jean’ still has room to climb even higher.

Does a movie deserve this much credit for reviving a 40 year old song, or was ‘Billie Jean’ always going to find its way back to the top?