The Sinners soundtrack is having a major moment. In the days following the Academy Awards on March 15, the film’s compilation soundtrack collected 756,000 official on-demand streams in the United States, a 150% jump from the 310,000 streams it pulled the previous week. The numbers confirm what many viewers suspected after watching the film dominate the ceremony: the music had left a lasting impression.
The biggest individual beneficiary of the Oscars boost was “I Lied To You,” performed by Miles Caton and produced by Raphael Saadiq. The track went from 45,000 on-demand streams on March 9 to 154,000 the day after the ceremony, a 240% increase that reflects just how powerfully the song landed with audiences both in the theater and at home.
A scene that stopped the film in its tracks
“I Lied To You” is attached to one of the most discussed sequences in Sinners, a film already generating considerable cultural conversation. In the scene, Caton’s character Sammie Moore performs at a juke joint run by his cousins Smoke and Stack, both played by Michael B. Jordan, defying the wishes of his pastor father. As he sings, the film conjures a sweeping vision of Black musical and dance traditions across time, threading together the past, present and future in a single breathtaking moment.
That scene carried its weight at the Oscars too. Caton and Saadiq brought the song to the Academy Awards stage with a performance that drew surprise appearances from Brittany Howard, Shaboozey and Rhiannon Giddens among others. Legendary ballet dancer Misty Copeland, whose celebrated Firebird performance is directly referenced in the film’s juke joint sequence, also appeared on stage. It was a performance that felt less like an awards show number and more like a cultural statement.
A historic night for music on film
Sinners was not the only soundtrack story of the evening. The animated musical KPop Demon Hunters made history at the ceremony when its song “Golden” became the first K-pop track to win Best Original Song, adding to a Grammy win for Best Song Written for Visual Media it had already claimed in February.
The recognition translated immediately into streaming activity. The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack pulled 5.1 million streams the day after the Oscars, while “Golden” alone generated 1.68 million official on-demand streams in the United States. The song is performed by Ejae, Audrey Nuna and Rei Ami, who voice the fictional band HUNTR/X within the film.
The Oscars still move music in a streaming world
Taken together, the post-ceremony numbers for both soundtracks make a compelling case that the Academy Awards retain genuine power to drive music discovery, even in an era when streaming consumption is driven largely by algorithms and playlist placement rather than broadcast television moments.
For Sinners, the surge is particularly meaningful. The film arrived with serious cinematic ambition and a deep investment in the history and emotional power of American music. Seeing that investment rewarded not just with awards but with hundreds of thousands of new listeners discovering the soundtrack in real time suggests that the film’s reach is still expanding, well past its theatrical release and well past Oscar night itself.
The streaming data was drawn from Luminate and shared with Billboard following the ceremony.
