Steve Miller on success of Eminem collaboration: “I’d never seen anything like it”

Earlier this year, Eminem sampled Steve Miller Band’s ’80s classic “Abracadabra” for his track “Houdini,” and Miller says he’s amazed at how fast the song became a huge hit.

In an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune, Miller says the release of the tune gave him “a lesson about what social media has done to the record business.”

“When I put out ‘Abracadabra’ in 1982, it became the #1 record in the world and that took about 12 months,” he says. “With Eminem, two days after we signed our agreement, he released ‘Houdini’ at 12:01 a.m. on a Friday. Within 30 minutes, 60,000 people had watched the video on YouTube. By 10 a.m. it was 3 million. Nearly 50 million people streamed it, worldwide, in just the first week.”

He adds, “I’d never seen anything like that. It was crazy, just instantly. So, that was a real lesson.”

Miller describes Em as “very cool” and says of the collab, “It feels good that a whole other group of people are listening to my music (through Eminem) and digging it.”

Miller is currently the special guest on the Journey/Def Leppard Summer Stadium tour. The tour hits San Francisco on Wednesday.