The success of the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown has resulted in a lot of renewed interest in Dylan’s music, but just how big of an impact has it made?
Well, Rolling Stone explores the movie’s effect in a new article, noting Spotify data shows a huge increase in interest since the film’s December release. In fact, the year prior to the release, there were about 1 million streams of Dylan songs each day, with that number rising to 4 million a day after the release, with overall streams jumping about 100%.
There were also plenty of people experiencing Dylan’s music for the first time, with the streaming service showing a 110% increase in streams from newbies. There’s also three times more women taking an interest in Dylan than in the past, possibly because of the film’s star Timothée Chalamet.
“Timothée has that demo, and it’s maybe not a complete shocker that that would happen,” Richard Story, president of the Commercial Music Group at Sony Music Entertainment, tells the mag. “But it was a great opportunity that it did.”
The movie’s also helping increase sales, with both digital and physical sales doubling the week after the movie’s Christmas Day opening, with 1962’s Bob Dylan, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Dylan’s Greatest Hits record seeing the biggest bumps.
The Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, also saw a bump in visitors, including a lot of younger people, who are apparently learning about the rocker’s vast catalog.
“A lot of the younger visitors here assume ‘To Make You Feel My Love’ is an Adele or Garth Brooks song,” museum director Steven Jenkins says of the 1997 track covered by both artists. “So it’s fun to see those aha moments, when they say, ‘Oh, he’s that guy, too.’’’
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