Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight Broke Personal Streaming Records After ‘Verzuz’ Battle

Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight combined for 4 million streams.

The Verzuz battle effect is still making waves in the streaming industry. Billboard is reporting that in the days following their September 13 battle, Patti LaBelle and Gladys Knight combined for 4.1 million on-demand streams in the United States. This number represents a 127 percent increase from the 1.8 million streams before the battle, September 9-12.

Gladys Knight’s number-one charting single, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” earned 505,000 plays after the battle, followed by “Neither One of Us,” which gained 215,000. “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” “If I Were Your Woman,” and “Love Overboard” rounded out the top five for Knight.

Patti LaBelle’s duet with Michael McDonald, “If You Only Knew,” pulled in the most streams in her discography, with 237,000. The 2.2 million total on-demand streams outpaced her previous weekly best of 1.4 million streams from the last week of December 2019. In that month, she appeared on The Masked Singer and performed the Good Times theme song for Jimmy Kimmel’s live reproduction of the classic TV series.

According to Verzuz official Instagram page, the battle accounted for the number-one trending topic, as well as various trends for numbers 2 through 30. The broadcast garnered over 3.7 million viewers, with over 612,000 concurrent viewers and 3 billion total impressions.

“Last night waso beautiful and a memory I will forever treasure,” LaBelle wrote on Instagram after the broadcast. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart to my sisters Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick…sincerest thanks to all of you who joined us! I’m humbled and grateful.”