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On The Table Read, “the best entertainment magazine in the UK“, Onlinescasinos.co.uk have revealed the most popular and highest earning horror movie soundtracks in time for Halloween.
Horror Movie Soundtracks
Film music has a powerful impact on any cinema experience, and horror film music can be even more frightening than the film itself. So, given the impact of horror movie soundtracks, which are the most successful?
Onlinecasinos.co.uk decided to find out, and found 48 of the most streamed horror movie soundtracks on Spotify, and utilised royalty calculator, Musicgateway.com to reveal which has earned the most.
The top 20 highest earning horror movie soundtracks:
| Ranking | Horror movie: | Soundtrack’s combined Spotify plays: | Total estimated royalty earnings (£) |
| 1 | Dracula 2000 | 445,138,534 | £1,531,276.56 |
| 2 | Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas | 307,349,917 | £1,057,283.71 |
| 3 | The Lost Boys | 35,653,883 | £122,649.36 |
| 4 | Halloween | 30,106,403 | £103,566.03 |
| 5 | House Of 1,000 Corpses | 18,025,372 | £62,007.28 |
| 6 | Green Room | 12,591,534 | £43,314.88 |
| 7 | It Follows | 12,380,976 | £42,590.56 |
| 8 | Mandy | 9,322,307 | £32,068.74 |
| 9 | Annihilation | 9,248,161 | £31,813.67 |
| 10 | Under the Skin | 8,848,878 | £30,440.14 |
| 11 | Beetlejuice | 8,577,205 | £29,505.59 |
| 12 | Beyond the Black Rainbow | 8,053,474 | £27,703.95 |
| 13 | Hereditary | 7,599,327 | £26,141.68 |
| 14 | Suspiria | 4,958,841 | £17,058.41 |
| 15 | Alien | 4,324,101 | £14,874.91 |
| 16 | Psycho | 4,174,393 | £14,359.91 |
| 17 | A Nightmare On Elm Street | 3,362,819 | £11,568.10 |
| 18 | The Ring | 3,294,399 | £11,332.73 |
| 19 | Trick Or Treat | 3,242,235 | £11,153.29 |
| 20 | Jaws | 3,237,705 | £11,137.71 |
Please find the full list of all horror movie soundtracks analysed, and the links to the Spotify soundtrack albums within this data set.
Dracula
Onlinecasinos.co.uk discovered that the horror movie soundtrack is Dracula 2000, with an estimate of £1,531,276.56 in music royalties and 445 million combined Spotify plays. Despite a negative reception for the film iteself, the soundtrack features a distinct combination of rock and metal tracks from the likes of Saliva’s ‘Your Disease’ and Linkin Park’s ‘One Step Closer’, the latter of which has accumulated over 400 million plays alone.Â
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack, came in second place, with a potential estimated earnings of £1,057,283.71 in royalties as it garnered over 300 million combined Spotify plays so far.Â
The Lost Boys
The Lost Boys (1987) soundtrack has achieved over 35 million Spotify plays, estimated to be worth over £122,649.36 in royalties, puttig it in third place. The eerie score, composed by Thomas Newman, blends perfectly with the music soundtrack for this supernatural horror film, with hits such as ‘Cry Little Sister’ by Gerard McMann being a stand out moment.
Most successful horror movie songs:
| Ranking | Most played song: | Horror movie: | Total number of Spotify plays: | Current estimated royalty earnings (£) |
| 1 | One Step Closer By Linkin Park | Dracula 2000 | 415,128,593 | £1,428,042.36 |
| 2 | This Is Halloween By Danny Elfman | Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas | 87,149,086 | £299,792.86 |
| 3 | Halloween Theme By John Carpenter | Halloween | 22,688,797 | £78,049.46 |
| 4 | Cry Little Sister By Gerard McMann | The Lost Boys | 14,921,352 | £51,329.45 |
| 5 | Sinister Purpose By Creedence Clearwater Revival | Green Room | 12,008,612 | £41,309.63 |
| 6 | Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue By Ramones | House Of 1,000 Corpses | 7,561,303 | £26,010.88 |
| 7 | Love By Mica Levi | Under the Skin | 5,516,285 | £18,976.02 |
| 8 | Reborn By Colin Stetson | Hereditary | 4,487,842 | £15,438.18 |
| 9 | Mandy Love Them By Jóhann Jóhannsson | Mandy | 4,410,792 | £15,173.12 |
| 10 | Suspiria By Goblin | Suspiria | 3,374,643 | £11,608.77 |
Horror Movie Songs
Linkin Park’s ‘One Step Closer’ from Dracual 200 proves to be the most successful song in any horror movie, with an impressive 415 million plays on Spotify and an estimated £1.4 million in royalties.Â
In second place, ‘This Is Halloween’ composed by Danny Elfman for The Nightmare Before Christmas, currently has over 87 million Spotify plays; contributing a potential estimate of £299,793 to the movie’s overall soundtrack earnings.
Methodology:
1. With Halloween fast approaching, Onlinecasinos.co.uk were intrigued to find the highest earning horror movie soundtracks.
2. First, the experts at Onlinecasinos.co.uk utilised multiple reputable sources (RollingStone,Classicfm, Udiscovermusic, NME, Kerrang, Collider, Studiobinder, Artlist and FarOutmagazine) to compile a seed list of popular horror movies with the most reputable soundtrack.
3. Having scraped each source, a final full list of 75 movie soundtracks were found.
4. Subsequently, the official soundtrack album for each movie was sourced on Spotify, where the number of ‘plays’ (streams) for each song under the album was collated.
– Official soundtrack albums that were not available on Spotify were excluded from the study, as well as songs that indicated less than 1,000 plays.
– Only the movies with an official soundtrack album listed on Spotify were used for accuracy, leaving a total of 48 movie soundtracks analysed.
– For each soundtrack album, the most played songs were also accumulated.
5. The combined total number of ‘plays’ for each album were then inputted on Musicgateway.com – a music royalty calculator, to gather the total amount of estimated earnings per movie’s soundtrack album.
6. Finally, the horror movie soundtrack with the highest estimated royalties was crowned as the highest earning soundtrack album.
7. The estimated earnings for the most played song under each album was also noted, to determine the most successful horror movie songs.
8. Data was collected on October 18th 2022 and is accurate as of then, but subject to change.
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