Creatix / February 22, 2026
In 2025, the song "Die With a Smile" by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars was the most streamed in the world, the #1 song of all. We can use it as a brief case study in how a single creation in the digital economy can generate enormous economic impact—directly, indirectly, and over multiple years.
At first glance, it’s “just a song.” But in today’s economy, a song is also intellectual property, a digital asset, a global distribution vehicle, a cultural catalyst, and a recurring revenue stream. It is a living economic engine; it's a small business on its own part of a large industry and a bigger digital economy worldwide.
Let’s explore how.
1. The Direct Economic Impact (2025 Alone)
Public reports indicate the song accumulated roughly 2.8+ billion global on-demand audio streams in 2025, including over 1.7 billion on Spotify alone. Streaming payouts vary widely by platform and it is not easy to estimate total revenue. Using a simple methodology, we can estimate about $20–$25 million in revenue from the song.
If we apply commonly cited effective averages of roughly $0.003–$0.005 per Spotify stream and $0.006–$0.01 per stream on higher-paying platforms like Apple Music, then billions of plays quickly scale into the tens of millions of dollars. Even using mid-range assumptions (for example, ~$0.004 on Spotify and ~$0.007 elsewhere), 2.8+ billion streams mathematically lands in roughly the $18–$24 million range, before adding YouTube, radio, and licensing income, easily validating a conservative $20–$25 million estimate.
That includes:
Spotify and other audio streaming platforms
YouTube ad revenue
Radio and performance royalties
Public performance income
Sync licensing (if applicable)
This is the direct revenue layer — money flowing to:
Record labels
Songwriters
Publishers
Producers
Distributors
Performing artists
But the story does not stop there.
2. The Indirect Halo Effect
When a global hit explodes, it radiates outward economically.
A) Catalog Boost
Listeners discovering “Die With a Smile” often explore:
Other songs by Lady Gaga
Other songs by Bruno Mars
Collaborators’ catalogs
That increases streaming revenue across entire discographies.
B) Touring Impact
A hit song:
Increases ticket demand
Raises ticket prices
Boosts merchandise sales
Strengthens sponsorship deals
C) Platform Engagement
More streams mean:
More ad revenue for platforms
More subscription value perception
More incentive for platforms to invest in artists
D) Media & Content Economy
The song generates:
Reaction videos
Dance challenges
TikTok trends
Covers
Tutorials
Commentary
Each of these creates revenue for creators downstream. A single intellectual creation becomes a node in a vast web of economic activity.While we cannot calculate the multiplier effect with precision, we can reasonably estimate it.
If “Die With a Smile” generated roughly $20–25 million in direct 2025 revenue from streaming, YouTube, radio, and licensing, that money did not stop with the artists or labels. It was distributed across publishers, producers, engineers, marketing teams, platform employees, venue workers, and many others.
Each recipient then spent a portion of that income in the broader economy. In creative industries, multipliers commonly range between 1.8x and 2.5x, meaning the song’s total 2025 economic activity could plausibly fall in the $40–55 million range once secondary circulation is included.
In the digital era, network effects may push this even higher, as derivative content, social media engagement, and global accessibility allow one intellectual creation to become a node in a vast, expanding web of economic activity.
3. The Multi-Year Effect
Unlike a factory product that is consumed once, a digital song:
Does not wear out.
Does not depreciate from use.
Does not require additional manufacturing per stream.
In fact, the opposite happens:
The more it is "used", the more of it there is and the more valuable it becomes.
Hits often continue generating millions annually for years. If “Die With a Smile” maintains even 1 billion streams per year for five additional years, it could produce tens of millions more in cumulative revenue.
This compounding and generative effect is what makes digital intellectual property so powerful and economically impactful.
4. The Multiplier Effect
In economics, the multiplier effect describes how money spent by one person becomes income for another.
If a listener streams a song:
Spotify earns revenue.
Spotify pays rightsholders.
Rightsholders pay artists, producers, and employees.
Those individuals spend income on goods and services.
That spending becomes income for others.
Money circulates. A $20 million hit can ripple into far more total economic activity when secondary spending is included.
In the digital economy, the multiplier is amplified because:
Distribution is global.
Marginal cost of delivery is near zero.
Consumption scales infinitely.
5. Generative Resources vs Scarcity Economies
Historically, many economies were scarcity-based:
Coal depleted when burned.
Land could only grow so much.
Physical goods required raw materials.
A significant part of our culture, institutions, and economic instincts were shaped during those eras of material limitation. Property rights, competition for territory, hoarding behavior, protectionism, and even zero-sum thinking about wealth emerged in environments where resources were finite and depletion was visible.
Many of our political debates and economic anxieties still reflect those scarcity-era assumptions. This is the idea that if someone gains, someone else must lose. Yet the digital economy increasingly operates on different mechanics. Intellectual property, software, and creative works can expand with use rather than shrink, challenging inherited mindsets that were rational in a coal-and-steel world but are less aligned with an information-driven, networked economy.
Digital assets are often generative:
The more a song is shared, the more valuable it becomes.
The more it is used in social media, the more cultural weight it gains.
The more attention it captures, the more derivative economic activity it inspires.
“Die With a Smile” does not shrink with each play. It multiplies in influence. This is radically different from industrial-era production. The digital economy increasingly runs on assets that expand with use rather than contract.
6. Envy vs Opportunity
Some people still get mad and full envy when others make a lot of money. But the modern digital economy works differently.
When creators succeed at scale:
They expand the industry.
They create templates and formulas others can study.
They demonstrate replicable systems of production, marketing, collaboration, and distribution.
Every massive success enlarges the total pie.
The tools that created “Die With a Smile” — digital production software, global streaming platforms, social media promotion — are accessible to millions of aspiring creators.
Knowledge spreads. Recipes replicate. Opportunities expand and compound. In expanding and compounding industries, wealth creation is not zero-sum (i.e. if someone wins, someone must lose). Instead, there are many winners and is hard to find net losers. Even if you are not economically involved at all, perhaps you like the song or a future one rolled out by the same set of industries.
7. The Song’s Message Mirrors the Economy
The lyrics of “Die With a Smile” center on loving fully, living without regret, and finding meaning even if the world ended tomorrow. There is a subtle economic parallel:
The song is about abundance of emotion. The digital economy is about abundance of distribution.
The emotional impact spreads without depletion. The economic impact spreads without exhaustion.
The more people share the song, the more value it creates, both emotionally and financially. Of course, the song talks about romantic love, which typically cannot be shared and that could be scarcity based if you focus on the object of love rather than the feeling itself. But that is a topic for another spot. In this one, we stay on the economic impact of digital creations.
8. We Should Study the Digital Economy
Instead of focusing only on what is broken in the world, we should study what is working:
Attention economics
Expanding opportunities globally
Intellectual property scalability
Global digital infrastructure
Network effects
The digital era has produced industries where:
Marginal cost approaches zero.
Global reach can be almost instant.
Revenue can scale exponentially and spread globally.
Understanding this system is more empowering than resenting its outcomes, or even worse, equating the new economy to the old days of scarcity-based constraints.
9. The Expanding Pie
A song that generates ~$20 million in one year is not just income for two artists. It is income for:
Studio engineers
Session musicians
Graphic designers
Marketing teams
Platform engineers
Content creators
Venue workers
Radio employees
Data analysts
Advertisers
The pie grows. And that was only one song in one year. Imagine multiple songs with multi year effects. Imagine all sorts of digital creations other than music. Modern economies increasingly revolve around generative assets that keep expanding and scaling with use. They are not scarce and they do not create a zero-sum world where you have to consume yourself with envy seeing other primates enjoying the fruits of their creations.
Think About It
“Die With a Smile” is just a song. Many of us have never listened it. Yet many others did, repeatedly. The song's creators, producers, distributors, and consumers added economic value and tax revenue for everyone. Some are wealthy artists with mansions and possessions in need of constant maintenance, employing many other people and service providers. Economic activity keeps multiplying. The pie keeps getting bigger and some remain bitter stuck in outdated economic models and misguided mindsets.
We are living in a brave new world where the economy includes generative resources that expand with use. They are not depleted with use. The more we understand how this "generative economy" works, the more we can participate in building it, and perhaps, like the song suggests, we can all live, and create, without regret.
Now you know it.
www.creatix.one (creating meaning you can trust)
consultingbooks.com (you owe them to yourself)
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