Late last year, Spotify released its annual “Artist Wrapped” stats to show how many streams each musician or band generated on its platform. The latter video has 26.5 million views, which far surpasses the others. 2017, Mr.Kitty noticed a music video for “After Dark” featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper from the film, “Silver Linings Playbook.” Then in April 2019, a fan named Diana Sandra posted the song to YouTube with footage from “Career Opportunities,” a 1991 film with Jennifer Connelly. In May 2016, a fan shared the song with footage from the Ryan Gosling film, “Drive.” In Feb. 2015, Mr.Kitty uploaded “After Dark” to his YouTube channel with some cover art. Typically, YouTube keeps 40% of the advertising revenue. Per YouTube’s copyright claim process, when content is uploaded to YouTube and it matches an artist’s music, any advertising revenue earned by that content is credited to the artist through the artist’s music distributor. Consequently, it’s the song that Mr.Kitty earns the most money from, even from videos that fans have published. With roughly 40 million video views on YouTube across several uploads – and 24.6 million plays on Spotify – “After Dark” is Mr.Kitty’s most popular single. “That was actually the same night that I wrote ‘After Dark,’” he said. He remembers playing a final show in Dallas before hitting the road. Now, I guess, they’re finally happening.” Courtesy: Mr.Kitty “After Dark” And Mr.Kitty’s Move To Austin But I just wanted all my worlds of things that I liked to mix together. “I also got to mix my own stuff, so that was cool. “I just really wanted studio time, so this guy let me apprentice in one of these studios. “I took up work engineering metal bands and hip-hop acts and stuff like that,” he said. So from 2005 to 2009, I made breakcore and it was all just 200 BPM drum and bass that was just cut up and thrown in a blender with like really pretty melodies over it.Ī few years later, he gained experience at a local studio. He still has 30 releases from that period that he hasn’t shared yet. His friend’s father gave him a demo disc for the software, and Mr.Kitty spent hours producing music, mostly breakcore. That encounter, he says, changed his life. That’s where he learned about Fruity Loops, a popular music production software. In middle school, he visited his friend’s house across the street and saw her father’s home music studio. “I kind of grew up super sheltered, so I had to find a lot of things myself,” Mr.Kitty said. He discovered Tiësto, Armin Van Buuren, and Venetian Snares, a Canadian breakcore artist.
listening to trance music on a Dallas/Fort Worth radio station, 106.7 FM.
As a teenager, he would stay up until 3 a.m. Mr.Kitty’s music career began more than a decade ago. “I just took the hottest shower known to man and just burned all my flesh off, so I’m pretty good,” he said. Living in Southeast Austin, Mr.Kitty regained water on the same day we spoke. We spoke to Mr.Kitty shortly after the winter weather caused widespread power and water outages in Austin. “That’s one of the big things that’s actually paying my bills right now,” he said.
It’s on YouTube that Mr.Kitty earns the bulk of his streaming revenue. On YouTube, Mr.Kitty’s channel has nearly 94,000 subscribers and generates roughly 71,000 video views per day, according to SocialBlade, an industry blog. Mr.Kitty, who describes his music as self-destructive synthpop, amassed 20 million Spotify streams in 2020, and he has more than 700,000 monthly Spotify listeners.