Queen biopic pushes Bohemian Rhapsody to become biggest classic rock streaming success

With heritage artists struggling to match Ed Sheeran and Drake on streaming playlists, Queen just cracked the code thanks to their box office biopic hit.

Queen are the champions, my friends, with Bohemian Rhapsody now the most streamed song from the 20th century, courtesy of the box office-busting movie based on the legendary British band.

The song and its official music video have surpassed 1.6 billion streams — on music and video platforms — with views of the original clip getting the most clicks.

Heritage artists whose back catalogue benefited from the invention of new formats such as CD and then downloads have struggled to match the popularity of contemporary chart-toppers including Ed Sheeran and Drake on streaming platforms.

September 1984: Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen performs during a concert. Picture: AFP

Queen are the kings of streaming. Picture: Supplied.

That is mostly because their older loyal fans already have the music in their online libraries or prefer to play them on their home stereos.

But the film, the highest grossing music biopic of all time, has reinvigorated Queen’s extensive repertoire with a new audience.

The song has clocked up more than half a billion streams on Spotify alone, with Apple Music users believed to be ticking over more than 300 million listens.

Drake had the biggest track on Spotify this year with God’s Plan released in January. Picture: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP.

That traffic has pushed the song past other 20th century classic rock and pop songs including Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, Gun’s N’Roses Sweet Child O’Mine and November Rain and A-ha’s Take on Me.

“So the River of Rock Music has metamorphosed into streams! Very happy that our music is still flowing to the max!” the excitable keeper of the Queen vaults Brian May said.

It’s not the first time Queen has enjoyed a film-assisted ride back to the top of the charts with Bohemian Rhapsody.

The hilarious and much-imitated scene in Wayne’s World featuring the song pushed it back to the top 5 of the US charts in 1992.

It has also been a Christmas No. 1 in the UK twice.

Rami Malek as rock icon Freddie Mercury in a scene from the Queen biopic. Picture: Twentieth Century Fox

Queen’s ubiquitous chart presence in the wake of the Bohemian Rhapsody film continues five weeks after its release, with the song still hovering the Australian top 40 while the band have three records in the ARIA top 10, with the film soundtrack at No. 2 and Greatest Hits at No. 3

It is one of the most unlikely hits of all time considering it runs for six minutes and shifts sonic gears from soft ballad to dramatic opera and finally searing hard rock.