Playboi Carti's HBA - Songwriter + Publisher Royalties

In December 2023, a track called "H00dByAir" surfaced on Instagram and nowhere else. Never sold, never streamed, never officially released, it circulated for fifteen months on fan recordings alone. In March 2025 it arrived properly, retitled "HBA," as the twenty-eighth track on Playboi Carti's third studio album, MUSIC. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number one on 298,000 first-week units, drew 139 million Spotify streams on its opening day, and put all thirty of its songs onto the Billboard Hot 100 in a single week. HBA entered at number 48.

This catalog is the full composition interest in that song, combining the public performance royalties collected through the performing rights organisation BMI along with the publishing side collected by Beatstars that covers streaming, downloads and sync. Streaming supplies 74.2% of earnings, divided almost evenly between Spotify and Apple Music where platform detail is reported. Live concert performance supplies another 10.5%, and that share is the one still being fed. Playboi Carti spent most of 2025 opening The Weeknd's "After Hours Til Dawn" stadium run, headlined his own arena tour from October into December, and remains on the road today, opening the "After Hours Til Dawn" European and UK stadium dates into September 2026 before headlining "ComplexCon" in Los Angeles on October 4.

For an investor, the argument is timing rather than track record. This is a song sixteen months into its life: the current European stadium dates fall entirely outside the reported window, international societies are still catching up to a release this recent, and a track that was in the 2025 touring setlist has not yet been priced on a full touring cycle. A mature catalog offers decades of history and little left to discover. This one offers the reverse.

Playboi Carti is among the most distinctive and influential voices in contemporary rap, an artist whose vocal approach and aesthetic have shaped a generation of younger performers. His third studio album, MUSIC, released in March 2025, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 298,000 album-equivalent units, becoming the fastest-selling record of his career and the highest-selling rap album debut of that year. He performed at the 2025 Grammy Awards and the BET Awards that same year.

"HBA" is the twenty-eighth track on MUSIC. It first appeared in December 2023 as "H00dByAir," released only through the artist's Instagram, and it built an audience for fifteen months without ever being commercially available. Pitchfork ranked it among the hundred best songs of 2024 while it was still unreleased. On the album version, several vocal lines are muted and a snare roll was added. It debuted at number 48 on the Hot 100 and has remained in the live set, appearing in both stadium opening slots and arena headline shows through 2025.

Earnings Note. The Earnings by Period chart below reflects royalty payments based on two distinct statement sets from different payors. The Last 12 Months include:

BMI Statements: 2Q2025 through 1Q2026 (Quarterly)
Beatstars Statements: 2H2025 through 1H2026 (Semiannual)