"Ice Cream Paint Job" Songwriter Royalties

In 2009 a Dallas rap single about a candy-painted car reached No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went Platinum. By 2014 it was only paying about $1,000 a year. Streaming brought it back, and the last twelve months are the strongest twelve months this catalog has had since 2011.

The comeback is not just a dollar figure. It shows up in plays. ASCAP reported about 47 million performances of this song over the last twelve months, up from 36 million the year before. Spotify plays nearly doubled. YouTube and Pandora both climbed. The data does not point to one event that caused it. What it shows is a song that has held a steady place in 2000s throwback listening, quarter after quarter, and is being played more today than it was in 2019.

This is public performance income, collected by ASCAP. It is paid whenever the song is played in public: streamed, on radio, on satellite, in a gym or a store, or live on stage. Streaming is 88% of the last twelve months and grew 32%. Radio adds another 4%. About 93% of the money is earned in the United States, with the rest arriving from roughly 35 countries through ASCAP's agreements with performing rights societies overseas, led by Canada, Germany, the U.K. and Australia.

For an investor, the case is a record that has already been through its rise, its long drop and its recovery. Earnings have grown in each of the last four years and now sit about 7% above the three-year average. You are buying a Platinum single that has spent a decade rebuilding, at a level it has not reached in fifteen years, for the next thirty years of collections.

This catalog is a single Platinum hit from the late-2000s Southern rap era.

"Ice Cream Paint Job" is the breakout single from Dorrough, the Dallas rapper who records as Dorrough Music. Released on April 7, 2009, it became his only Hot 100 entry and his defining record. It reached No. 27 on the Hot 100, No. 10 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, No. 5 on Hot Rap Songs and No. 14 on Rhythmic Airplay, spending twenty weeks on the Hot 100. The RIAA certified it Platinum in 2010. It also finished the year at No. 48 on Billboard's year-end R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart and No. 14 on year-end Rap Songs.

The song carried his debut album, Dorrough Music, released on E1 Music in August 2009, to No. 36 on the Billboard 200, No. 6 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and No. 2 on Top Rap Albums. A West Coast remix followed in September 2009 with Snoop Dogg, Nipsey Hussle, E-40, Soulja Boy and Jim Jones. Girl Talk sampled it on the 2010 album All Day. The phrase itself entered car and hip-hop slang and stayed there, which is a large part of why the song is still surfacing in playlists and short-form video seventeen years later

Earnings Note. The most recent distribution period shows a small total because only the international portion of it had been paid as of the valuation date. ASCAP's domestic payment for that period has not yet been distributed, and it is payable to the winner of this catalog.