Audrey Nuna, EJAE, and Rei Ami, the voices behind Huntr/x, at the Grammys yesterday. (Brianna Bryson/WireImage)
The Grammys were Sunday night, and Netflix walked away with its first-ever win. 'Golden' from 'KPop Demon Hunters' took home best song written for visual media. It caps a run that's hard to overstate: the film has racked up 480M+ views, its soundtrack was the first to top the Billboard charts since 'Encanto,' and 'Golden' spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100.
Film and music have always fed off each other. But Netflix has been pushing it further than most:
- 'Stranger Things' turned Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' from a cult classic into a chart-topper nearly 40 years after release. It went from 22K daily streams to 5.1M in a single day, hit 1B total streams, and entered the Hot 100 for the first time.
- The show's music supervisor landed two Prince songs for the recent series finale, notoriously difficult clearances that speak to Netflix's pull with rights holders.
- The 'Bridgerton' string quartet covers have become a streaming staple, boosting both the covers and the original artists on Spotify.
But those were revivals and reinterpretations. With 'KPop Demon Hunters,' Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation created a fictional K-pop group, cast rising artists as the voices, and watched it become real. It's part of a broader shift in how music supervisors operate. According to a UCLA music industry professor, they now "nurture artists the way record labels used to," developing talent through strategic placement rather than just finding songs to match scenes.
Huntr/x didn't exist before the film. Now they've performed on Fallon, SNL, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and EJAE just became the first Korean-American female songwriter nominated for Grammy song of the year.
Looking ahead… 'Golden' is the Oscar frontrunner for best original song. If it wins, Netflix will have turned an animated kids' movie into a cross-platform awards sweep rivaling Disney's best.
