Dolly Parton Dies; US Streams Explode 2,109%
Dolly Parton Dies; US Streams Explode 2,109%
The News
Country legend Dolly Parton died Tuesday, and Americans answered by playing her records at a scale the industry rarely sees.
Data and analytics firm Luminate found audio and video streams of Parton's discography jumped 2,109% in the United States on the day of her death, compared with the Monday before, the Associated Press reported.
Globally, her streams rose 1,280%, according to the same Luminate figures, carried by AP, CTV News and One America News.
Timeline
Parton dies. Luminate later logs the 2,109% US and 1,280% global spike in streams of her catalog that day versus Monday.
The Conversation publishes an assessment arguing that for some fans Parton had taken on a "saint-like aura," a spiritual icon as much as a musical one.
Fox News, Rolling Stone, Billboard, the Washington Monthly and the San Francisco Chronicle all run legacy pieces the same morning, and the streaming numbers move onto the wires.
Reactions
Singer Noah Cyrus, who waited for her sister Miley Cyrus to speak first, paid tribute by calling Parton "a rainbow" and "an angel among us," Billboard reported.
Bebe Rexha, who collaborated with Parton, posted her own tribute reflecting on that work, according to The Independent.
Music experts interviewed by Fox News said Parton broke barriers for women in country music by controlling her own image, owning her work, and refusing to shed her femininity in order to be taken seriously.
Rolling Stone catalogued a philanthropic record that ran well past music: support for the Salvation Army, a long campaign for childhood literacy, and even work that helped revive the bald eagle population.
The Washington Monthly, writing from the left, called her an American icon and said it hoped her passing would not be the last time the right and the left could be united in admiration and grief.
What's Next
Streaming spikes after a major artist's death typically translate into chart movement, so expect Parton's songs to reappear on the album and song charts in the coming week's tallies.
More tributes from artists and from Nashville are still landing, and CTV News noted that the surge has refocused attention on the part of her legacy she cared most about — the songwriting.
More
The unusual thing about the Parton reaction is not its size but its spread. Fox News and One America News on the right, Rolling Stone and the Washington Monthly on the left, and the wire services in the middle all ran her legacy on the same day, and all of them landed in roughly the same place. That is not a normal week in American media.
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