Nickelback song downloads spiked dramatically after President Donald Trump tweeted a meme featuring the band’s 2005 hit “Photograph.”
Trump tweeted the “Photograph” meme, which allows users to put their own photograph into the music video, along with a photo of former Vice President Joe Biden golfing with his son Hunter and a Ukrainian gas executive.
The video in the president’s tweet didn’t even last 24 hours — it was removed from Twitter due to a copyright claim — but it apparently had an impact even in the short time the tweet was live. (RELATED: Trump’s Nickelback Parody Video Removed After Copyright Claim)
Nickelback sees 569% surge in song downloads after Trump’s ‘Photograph’ tweet https://t.co/iujt99R0eB by @zguz pic.twitter.com/57TvMgfnRG
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) October 7, 2019
Even with the 569% surge, the 14-year-old song (released October 22, 2005) only garnered 1000 downloads the week of Trump’s tweet.
On-demand streaming services also saw a spike, however. In the two days prior to Trump’s tweet, “Photograph” was streamed 558,000 times. In the two days after the tweet, there was a 38% surge resulting in 772,000 streams. Those numbers were based on data from streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube — direct views on Twitter were not included in the totals.
The White House also posted the “Photograph” meme on its YouTube channel, but that video was also removed after a similar copyright complaint.