Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘September’ is Having a Moment on Streaming

Do you remember? ? In the case of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” it seems the answer is a resounding “yes.” The funk classic saw a massive spike in sales and streams over the weekend — enough for it to land at Number 73 on Wednesday’s daily Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs chart, which offers a preview of the chart that will be finalized next Monday.

The song, which was originally released in 1978, has seen an increase in both sales and streams throughout the month of September. But things got particularly heated on the 21st, the fateful night referenced by Maurice White in the song’s opening line. Early reports from Alpha Data, which supplies data for the RS Charts, indicate that fans cued up “September” to the tune of 2.5 million streams on Saturday alone, a 225 percent increase from the day prior. That figure includes over 885,000 on-demand audio streams. (Finalized numbers will be released on Monday’s charts.)

Throughout the weekend, the song moved more than 12,200 total song units, including more than 2,300 song sales, according to early Alpha Data reports. That reflects a 244 percent increase in song units from the previous two-day period, but it’s even more of a jump when compared to a non-September weekend. On April 13th and 14th of this year, for instance, the track moved just 3,000 units.

The boost is similar to what Green Day has experienced every year around the same time for their song 2005 song “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” These spikes translate to a hefty spike in royalties paid to these artists, too. YouTube’s global music head Lyor Cohen said two years ago that the the service pays as much as $0.003 per stream in royalties. Not a cloudy day for Earth, Wind & Fire at all.

The Rolling Stone Top 100 chart tracks the most popular songs of the week in the United States. Songs are ranked by song units, a number that combines audio streams and song sales using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening like terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Rolling Stone Top 100 chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.