After its 1992 debut LP returned to the Billboard and iTunes charts last week, Rage Against The Machine's music has seen a 62 percent spike in streaming in the past seven days.
The group's music was streamed over 11 million times in the last week, with the song “Killing In The Name” accounting for 2.4 million of those streams alone. That put the song at Number Three on Billboard's Hard Rock Digital Songs Chart. Another tune, “Bulls on Parade,” has been streamed 1.4 million times in the same period.
Some of the surge could be attributed to a Twitter fight between Rage guitarist Tom Morello and a fan who questioned the band's politics. The tweet went viral, garnering more than 150,000 interactions.
Rage's surge in streaming comes at the same time as heightened unrest and calls for change in the U.S. Morello told us a while back that change always comes from the bottom up: “As someone who's worked for a United States senator, I realize that there are inherent, fundamental flaws to the system, where power and profit are inextricably linked, that makes it very difficult for anyone in that sort of position to effect real progressive change. Real change, I believe, always comes from below.”
Several other artists, including N.W.A., Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé, have also experienced spikes in streaming as nationwide protests rage on.
