Earlier this year, Eminem sampled Steve Miller Band’s ’80s classic “Abracadabra” for his track “Houdini,” and Miller says he’s amazed at how fast the song became a huge hit.
In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Miller says the release of the tune gave him “a lesson about what social media has done to the record business.”
“When I put out ‘Abracadabra’ in 1982, it became the #1 record in the world and that took about 12 months,” he says. “With Eminem, two days after we signed our agreement, he released ‘Houdini’ at 12:01 a.m. on a Friday. Within 30 minutes, 60,000 people had watched the video on YouTube. By 10 a.m. it was 3 million. Nearly 50 million people streamed it, worldwide, in just the first week.”
He adds, “I’d never seen anything like that. It was crazy, just instantly. So, that was a real lesson.”
Miller describes Em as “very cool” and says of the collab, “It feels good that a whole other group of people are listening to my music (through Eminem) and digging it.”
Miller is currently the special guest on the Journey/Def Leppard Summer Stadium tour. The tour hits San Francisco on Wednesday.
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