Disturbed’s ‘Down With the Sickness,’ At the Drive In’s ‘Quarantined’ See Sales Spike During Coronavirus Pandemic
The recent coronavirus pandemic is affecting more than just our ability to be in close proximity of each other, it's also had an affect on the sales of certain songs that would seemingly have greater significance in the world as it stands today. Among those seeing sales spikes over the past week are tracks from Disturbed, At the Drive In, R.E.M. and others.
According to Billboard, Disturbed's 20-year-old single "Down With the Sickness" was up 31 percent in digital song sales to 1,000, while it also climbed three percent in U.S. streams up to 2.6 million.
Another 20-year-old track, At the Drive In's "Quarantined" from their 2000 album Relationship of Command, saw a 70 percent jump in U.S. streams taking it up to 7,000.
One of the biggest beneficiaries during this time of crisis is R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It." The 1987 single from the Document album, actually debuted at No. 22 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales chart this past week, up a whopping 482 percent with over 5,000 downloads sold. In addition, it enjoyed a 169 percent gain to 1.7 million U.S. music streams, which led to the track's No. 4 debut on the Hot Rock Songs chart.
Other tracks of note seeing spikes during the pandemic include The Minutemen's "Corona," The Knack's "My Sharona," Weird Al Yankovic's "My Bologna," Joy Division's "Isolation" and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" among others.
66 Rock + Metal Albums Turning 20 in 2020