Viral hit 'Old Town Road' has been streamed hundreds of millions of times, but the story behind its making, which begins in a village outside Amsterdam, is less known.
Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, has shattered records, recently becoming the first song to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 17 consecutive weeks.
The 19-year-old produced the beat that became"Old Town Road" in June 2018 while sitting in his room in a village outside Amsterdam. But he told ABC News that he almost decided not to upload it to his digital store because it was"too different.""It gave me this nostalgic feeling." he said."I thought, the composition is so great, I have to do something with it, so I used the sample. I started playing with it, chopping it up.
Abe Batshon, the founder and CEO of Beatstars, told ABC News that artists who use the company's website have licensing agreements that are"formatted to make sure producers never lose their writer shares in any beats that are licensed out." Other beats sold on the platform include music for hits like Future's"Selfish," featuring Rihanna,"Queen Naija's"Medicine," and Joyner Lucas's"I'm Not Racist."
In fact, YoungKio first stumbled across"Old Town Road" when someone alerted him to a meme of Lil Nas X dancing to the track -- the song included his producer tag. At the time,"Old Town Road" was not on Spotify, Billy Ray Cyrus was not yet featured on it and it had only about 7,000 streams.
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