Astley, who had not written the song, received even less from the streaming revenues in that early period. He has acknowledged this with something like equanimity rather than bitterness — he has said in interviews, as late as 2010, that his YouTube royalties from the song amounted to approximately $12. Twelve dollars. From billions of plays.
This is the economic reality behind the cultural phenomenon of rickrolling, and it matters to a full understanding of the story: the meme made Astley famous again, but it did not, in its early years, make him significantly wealthier. The money was elsewhere.
## The Return, Before the Meme
The account of Astley’s return to music in the public record requires careful treatment, because the popular narrative — that the rickrolling meme restarted his career — oversimplifies a more gradual process.
He returned to recording, on some level, well before the rickrolling meme began. His album *Keep It Turned On* was released in 2001 on Polydor Records. The single “Sleeping” became a club hit after a Todd Terry remix — Terry being one of the defining house music producers of the 1990s, which suggests that Astley’s return in 2001 was aimed at the dance music audience that had been part of the original SAW appeal. The album did not produce a mainstream commercial breakthrough, but it established that he was making music again.
A compilation, *Greatest Hits*, was released in 2002 and was certified Gold by the BPI in the United Kingdom, a measure of consistent ongoing interest in his catalog. He returned to live touring in 2004. He signed with Sony BMG. The album *Portrait* was released in October 2005, reaching number 26 on the UK album chart. These were not the chart positions of 1987 and 1988, but they were not nothing — they were the numbers of a working musician with a dedicated audience, building back toward something.