“Weird Al” Yankovic didn’t anticipate going viral over his recent contribution to the 2023 Spotify Wrapped campaign, because in his words, “I just did it as a goof.”
“My manager said, ‘Hey, Spotify wants you to make a 30-second video for them to thank your listeners this year.’ So I said, ‘I had 80 million streams, and if I’m doing the math right, I think that comes out to like $12. So thanks for the sandwich,’” Yankovic says of the viral clip. “The 80 million, I think that’s ballpark — I asked my manager, and that’s about right. The $12 is actually an exaggeration for comic effect.”
The joke, as he explains it, was that “Spotify notoriously does underpay its artists.” But while the punchline was exaggerated, he notes, “some people made a point of saying, ‘I did the math, and he made more than $12.’ And yeah — it’s a joke. I didn’t make nearly as much as some people are claiming that I made, because I do have to split my royalties with a record label who take a huge chunk, and every other publisher and writer on my album. So I make closer to $12 than what they think I’m getting.”
That’s because even Yankovic has to face the economic realities of the industry. “There’s a reason why I’m not really releasing conventional albums anymore,” he says, pointing to the fact that his last album, 2014’s Mandatory Fun, hit No. 1 on the charts, but didn’t even go gold.
“People just aren’t buying records anymore. For the most part. I mean, obviously Taylor Swift is doing fine. But it’s hard in the recording industry,” he continues. “Which is another reason why I’ve been doing a lot of touring — I mean, I love touring, but also that’s a guaranteed income. Whereas with record sales, you know, that isn’t anywhere near what it used to be.”
Speaking of Swift, when Consequence jokes about re-recording his own tracks as “Al’s Version,” Yankovic laughs. But he also points out that that was kind of what happened when he was working on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack for 2022’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. “Every single one of my parodies, with the exception of ‘Eat It,’ I went back into the studio and re-recorded for the movie. Part of that was because we needed to have a new version that sounded like it was live, and the other reason is that way we didn’t have to license it from my old record company, which saved us a few bucks.”
Fun fact: In re-recording his old tracks, some of which are over 40 years old at this point, Yankovic had the opportunity to do a studio version of “Another One Rides the Bus,” which he’d never actually recorded in a studio before. “The master version of that that everybody’s familiar with was a live air check of The Dr. Demento Show. I just played that live on the radio and he happened to have his tape recorder running. So for the first time ever, I had to go into a recording studio and try to duplicate what I did sort of randomly in a radio station in 1980.”
For more from Yankovic on the home video release of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, check out Consequence next week. The Shout Factory DVD/Blu-ray release will be available starting December 12th.