Michael Jackson’s Thriller led halloween music on Saturday, Oct. 24, pulling nearly 1.7 million official on-demand U.S. streams. Tame Impala’s Dracula followed with over 1.1 million, keeping the early-season race tight as Halloween week builds.
Thriller and Dracula
The gap was real, but not comfortable. Thriller posted its highest daily total since Nov. 1 of last year, when it amassed 2.7 streams, and Dracula turned in its best day in over two months. The two songs now sit as the clearest proof that halloween music is already moving before Halloween proper.
Dracula got a lift from a JENNIE-featuring remix in February, which helped keep the track in rotation through the season. That push matters because seasonal listening rarely rewards one song alone; the early chart fight usually turns on which track can keep drawing daily demand once the warm-up weekend starts.
Billboard Hot 100 stakes
Billboard said two seasonal songs could be in the hunt for the Billboard Hot 100’s No. 1 spot for the first time ever. That puts the streaming totals in sharper focus than a simple holiday playlist race: the songs are not just competing for attention, they are competing for a chart outcome that has rarely been in play for this corner of the catalog.
Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me and Ray Parker Jr.’s Ghostbusters were just under 1.1 million streams on Oct. 24, while Citizens of Halloween’s This Is Halloween, Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers’ Monster Mash, and Andrew Gold’s Spooky Scary Skeletons were hovering around 1 million. That cluster shows how broad the seasonal lift has become: one lead song is ahead, but several older staples are close enough to pressure the order if listening spikes again.
Oct. 24 lead
The Saturday before Halloween usually serves as a warm-up, and this year it did exactly that for Thriller. The key question is not whether the track is already winning the race; it is whether Michael Jackson can keep that margin intact through Halloween proper, when streaming patterns typically tighten and the field gets one last push.
