Nickelback may have taken issue with President Trump’s unauthorized use of its song last week — but the band might be getting the last laugh.
After the president tweeted a doctored clip of Nickelback’s “Photograph” music video, which was taken down Thursday on a copyright claim, downloads for the track surged 569%, according to Billboard, citing data from Nielsen Music.
The president’s tweet, which racked up more than 400,000 likes, no longer features the music video clip that was edited to show Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger holding a photo of former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and two other men, one of whom was labeled, “Ukraine gas exec.” The same video was also uploaded to the White House’s YouTube page before also being taken down on a similar copyright complaint.
While the complaint from Warner Music Group resulted in the removal of both videos, the surge in publicity for Nickelback’s 2005 “Photograph” nonetheless resulted in a noticeable tick higher for downloads and streams of the 2005 classic.
During the two days following the president’s tweet, on-demand streams of “Photograph” on platforms, like YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify, jumped 38% to hit 772,000 streams, according to Nielsen Music. While digital downloads also spiked 569% over the same two-day period, the total for the week still only amounted to about 1,000 song downloads.
Zack Guzman is the host of YFi PM as well as a senior writer and on-air reporter covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.
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