Babyface and Teddy Riley's "Verzuz" battle Instagram live on Monday (April 20th) managed to turn into a big success after several delays, and even led both artists to experiencing a major surge in streams afterward. The legendary producers finally had the chance to face-off over IG live on Monday after multiple postponements had begun putting a damper on the whole affair. It was all worth the trouble, though, especially considering how much traffic the battle brought to both Babyface and Teddy's streaming numbers.
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According to Nielsen Music/MRC Data reports, all 49 tracks used in the battle combined garnered 3 million on-demand audio streams in the U.S. the day after the live event took place (April 21st). This is a massive increase from day prior, which only recorded 1.4 million cumulative streams, meaning Face and Teddy's collective numbers saw a 115% surge within the span of one day.
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The battle track that garnered the most streams on the 21st was the Babyface-produced "Can We Talk" by Tevin Campbell, with 232,000 on-demand audio streams, a 110% increase from the 110,000 streams the day before. During the battle, Tevin tweeted that "'Can We Talk' is a song about stalking but it works every time," which may have had something to do with the increased interest in streaming the song.
The next two tracks that received the highest number of streams were Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” featuring Dr. Dre with 173,000, and SWV’s “Right Here/Human Nature” with 128,000, both produced by Teddy. Two Boyz II Men songs produced by Babyface completed the Top 5: “I’ll Make Love to You” with 101,000 and “End of the Road” with 100,000. With these numbers, it's becoming more and more clear the discernible impact that the "Verzuz" series is having on the music industry.
