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Grammy Awards Boost Music Sales

02/18/2013
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(Nielsen) Nielsen's David Bakula takes a look at the impact of the Grammy Awards on music sales: In looking at music sales after the 55th Grammy Awards this past Sunday, it's clear that the Award Show Effect is alive and well. More than 28 million viewers in the U.S. watched the music industry's big night, which inspired many of them to quickly seek out their favorites and add them to their collections.

To get a sense of the true impact that the Grammys have on sales, Nielsen compared sales of performed, nominated and award-winning music following the show with sales of the same music the week before the show.

Album of the Year: Mumford & Sons' Babel: Sales of Babel increased 50 percent from the prior week. Sales of "I Will Wait," the song the group performed at the show, increased by 116 percent. The show even fueled a 37-percent spike in sales of Mumford & Sons' prior album, Sigh No More, which came out three years ago.

Record of the Year: Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know," featuring Kimbra: Even though he's been making music for years, Gotye jumped into the spotlight a little over a year ago with the release of Making Mirrors, which has helped the Belgium-born Australian artist sell more than seven million copies of "Somebody That I Used To Know," the song he recorded with New Zealander Kimbra. This week, sales of the track climbed 101 percent and sales of the album increased 124 percent. In addition to winning record of the year, the song also picked up the award for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, and Gotye's Making Mirrors won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

Song of the Year: Fun.'s "We Are Young," featuring Janelle Monae: Fun.'s "We Are Young" has already achieved great success in sales, selling more than six million songs sold to date. This week, sales of the song increased 182 percent and sales of the band's album Some Nights increased 87 percent. Fun. performed their song "Carry On," which propelled a 138 percent increase in sales from the prior week. Fun. also won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

The Tributes: But it wasn't just new artists that benefitted from this year's Grammys, as the annual awards show always pays tribute to artists that paved the road for today's trendsetters. This year, some of today's brightest stars performed tributes that honored groundbreaking artists like Patti Page, Carole King, Bob Marley, Dave Brubeck, Levon Helm of The Band, and The Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch. Sales of Bob Marley's Legend album (+81% over prior week), The Band's greatest hits package (+203%) and Dave Brubeck's song "Take Five" (+248%) showed that the Grammy audience fondly remembers music's past as well as its future. more on this story

Nielsen submitted this story.
Copyright Nielsen - Excerpted here with permission.

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