It’s an age-old query that will get requested yearly earlier than the Tremendous Bowl: How a lot are these artists getting paid to carry out in the course of the halftime present? The reply now, and for the foreseeable future will likely be nothing.
That’s proper: Kendrick Lamar, Usher, Rihanna and dozens of different artists over the previous few a long time didn’t receives a commission a single cent for his or her performances: The NFL covers all the prices related to the present, nevertheless it doesn’t pay every performer an look price. They’re solely paid the minimal union scale, which usually quantities to about $1,000 per day for the efficiency itself and different days they’re rehearsing.
However that doesn’t imply that Kendrick received’t see any monetary advantages from his buzzy efficiency from Sunday — fairly the other, in actual fact.
Like the businesses paying for a Tremendous Bowl business spot, acting at halftime is a chance for artists to promote themselves to an viewers they might by no means get once more. For instance, this 12 months, Lamar broke the report for the most-watched Tremendous Bowl halftime present ever, with 133.5 million viewers.
That’s an enormous viewership to showcase your music to, and in lots of circumstances, it pays dividends sooner or later.
Within the days which have adopted his efficiency, Lamar has seen a major improve in streams. Total, his music has seen a 175% improve in streams.
The songs he carried out in the course of the present have additionally seen a rise in streams, together with “Not Like Us” (430%), “HUMBLE” (300%), “man on the backyard” (260%) and “euphoria” (260%), in keeping with Forbes.
This resulted in Lamar breaking the all-time report for probably the most month-to-month listeners for a rapper within the historical past of Spotify.
On Apple Music, the streams for “Not Like Us” elevated by 905%, and is as soon as once more the highest tune on the International and US Every day Prime 100. The streams for “luther” elevated by 757% and streams for Lamar’s total catalog elevated by 328%.
Thoughts you, generally, streaming providers pay artists only a few thousandths of a penny per stream. However with “Not Like Us” racking up greater than 11 million Spotify streams on the Monday after the Tremendous Bowl, determine Lamar pocketed greater than $30,000 from that one tune, that sooner or later, on that one streaming service alone. Begin including up the numbers of the remainder of his catalog throughout a number of DSPs, and that quantity swells shortly.
This is the reason it’s a no brainer for Lamar and different artists to carry out on the Tremendous Bowl, though the NFL just isn’t paying them something, the cash they make on the backend will greater than make-up for it.
Particularly for Lamar since his Grammy-winning diss monitor was the largest earner within the beef he had with Drake. In response to a report from Forbes, that monitor generated $7.6 million in 2024 alone (it was launched in Might). Simply think about how a lot it is going to generate this 12 months after successful massive on the Grammys and acting at reside on the Tremendous Bowl.