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18.05.12 MusicWeek 15
Universal executives will also be paying close
attention to the Q1 UK A&R performances of Parlophone and Virgin, part, of course, of its $2.2bn (£1.4bn) takeover target EMI. Virgin, in particular, shone over the three months as Emeli Sande’s first album Our Version Of Events sold 350,697 copies, helping to place the company only behind Island and Polydor in Music Week’s A&R rankings with a 9.8% market share. This total also took in albums such as Professor Green’s At Your Inconvenience and Sinners Never Sleep by You Me At Six. Parlophone’s Q1 UK A&R market share was
exactly half that of Virgin, taking it to ninth place in the rankings and including another 200,000 copies of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto. Although losing top A&R billing, XL was
CURRENT UK-SOURCED SINGLES TOP 10 POS ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL
1 JESSIE J Domino Island/Lava 2 EMELI SANDE Next To Me Virgin 3 RIZZLE KICKS Mama Do The Hump Island 4 DJ FRESH FEAT. RITA ORA Hot Right Now Ministry of Sound 5 COVER DRIVE Twilight Global Talent 6 COLDPLAY Paradise Parlophone 7 OLLY MURS Dance With Me Tonight Epic 8 LABRINTH FEAT. TINIE TEMPAH Earthquake Syco 9 ED SHEERAN Drunk Atlantic 10 LANA DEL REY Video Games Polydor
Q1 2012 TOP 10 SINGLES COMPANIES BASED ON UK SIGNINGS/A&R’d ACTS
ISLAND 24.1% RCA 13.0% VIRGIN 10.9% POLYDOR 9.4% Atlantic 7.8%
PARLOPHONE 5.0% EPIC 5.6%
XL 3.7% 0 5 10 15 20 25 0 3
MINISTRY OF SOUND 6.1% MERCURY 5.5%
DECCA 5.2% COLUMBIA 4.8%
6
PARLOPHONE 4.9% MERCURY 5.5%
9 12 15 RCA 8.4% ATLANTIC 7.6%
hardly a spent force in Q1 as Adele’s second album finished yet again as the overall top artist seller and secured her record company a very respectable fourth place on the A&R league table with a 9.4% share. Among those also contributing to the total were SBTRKT and Friendly Fires. Sony’s combined UK A&R might was less than
half that of Universal’s in Q1, commanding 17.9% of the sales of the period’s 100 top non-catalogue UK albums. This largely reflected little in the way of big new releases on the domestic front with its sales instead coming from 2011 releases, although it did deliver the debut album from last year’s X Factor runner-up Marcus Collins. The self-titled release was joined among RCA’s top UK-sourced Q1 sellers by a variety of other albums by X Factor-
CURRENT UK-SOURCED ALBUMS TOP 10 POS ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL
1 ADELE 21 XL 2 LANA DEL REY Born To Die Polydor 3 EMELI SANDE Our Version Of Events Virgin 4 ED SHEERAN +Atlantic 5 JESSIE J Who You Are Island/Lava 6 MILITARY WIVES In My Dreams Decca 7 OLLY MURS In Case You Didn’t Know Epic 8 NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS ...High Flying... Sour Mash 9 RIZZLE KICKS Stereo Typical Island 10 FLORENCE + THE MACHINE Ceremonials Island
Q1 2012 TOP 10 ALBUMS COMPANIES BASED ON UK SIGNINGS/A&R’d ACTS
ISLAND 14.9% POLYDOR 12.8%
VIRGIN 9.8% XL 9.4%
originated acts, including One Direction and Rebecca Ferguson, taking RCA to fifth place on the A&R league table with an 8.4% share. In its final quarter led by Mike Smith, Columbia
OPPOSITE The big winners: Jessie J, Lana Del Rey and Emeli Sandé helped Island, Polydor and Virgin respectively to top A&R placings in Q1
balanced the pop of sister Sony company RCA with its top UK-originated albums, which included guitar-based efforts by The Vaccines and Kasabian plus the long-awaited second Ting Tings album Sounds From Nowheresville, which was unable to come anywhere near the double-platinum sales of its predecessor We Started Nothing. Columbia finished 10th in the A&R rankings with 4.8%. Like Sony, Warner suffered from a lack of big
Charts left show Q1 2012’s biggest-selling non- catalogue singles and artist albums by UK- signed or A&R’d acts. Non-catalogue is defined as singles and albums which were originally released within the previous two years when the quarter started
new UK-created releases in the quarter, relying instead on albums such as Ed Sheeran’s +, which sold around another 300,000 copies to take its cumulative UK total beyond 1 million. His album was by far the biggest contributor to Atlantic’s 7.6% A&R share in sixth position. In the first quarter of 2011 the independent
sector commanded a 32.9% UK A&R albums share, largely because of XL and Adele. Twelve months on this share dropped to 18.7%, a total half made up of XL but also including contributions from labels such as Sour Marsh (Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds), Ministry of Sound (Example and Wretch 32), Dramatico (Katie Melua) and Ambush Reality (Enter Shikari).
Q1 2012 UK A&R PERFORMANCE BY CORPORATE GROUP
A&R market shares are compiled from Top 100 Q1 charts of the biggest-selling non-catalogue singles and artist albums by UK-signed or A&R’d artists. Catalogue covers all retrospectives or albums two or more years old when the quarter began
ALBUMS Universal 41.0% SINGLES
SONY 20.1% EMI 16.0% WARNER 9.4% MINISTRY OF SOUND 6.1% XL BEGGARS 3.7% OTHERS 3.7%
Universal 38.4% SONY 17.9% EMI 15.1% WARNER 9.9% XL BEGGARS 9.4% OTHERS 9.3%
SINGLES FOCUS ISLAND HOPS TO THE TOP OF THE LIST TO OUTSCORE DOMESTIC RIVALS
VOICE COACH JESSIE J’s record company Island more than survived the public vote with its domestic repertoire after being behind one in five of the 100 biggest-selling UK-sourced singles of Q1. Its tally of homegrown hits in the
quarter was led by the former Brit School pupil’s Domino, which sold more than half a million copies, but also included Rizzle Kicks’ Mama Do The Hump, Taio Cruiz’s Troublemaker and Dappy’s (right) Rockstar featuring Brian May. These and many others helped
Island outscore its two nearest rivals combined on Music Week’s league table ranking record companies by sales of the 100 biggest-selling non-catalogue singles of the quarter by UK-signed or A&R’d acts. Island’s 24.1% domestic A&R
market share was 11.1 percentage points ahead of second-placed RCA whose own top-selling homegrown single of the quarter was Syco act Labrinth’s (above) 2011 smash Earthquake, which sold another 200,000 copies between January and March, according to the Official Charts Company. The follow-up Last Time added another 82,720 sales to RCA’s tally, while its homegrown successes also included hits from One Direction, Cher Lloyd and
Alexandra Burke. As with its domestic A&R
albums run, Virgin’s singles showing with homegrown repertoire was dominated by Emeli Sandé whose Next To Me was the quarter’s third top seller with 384,823 units sold. Virgin also did well in the quarter with UK-signed Swedish House Mafia whose Antidote track with Knifeparty was Q1’s 31st top seller, helping the EMI company to third place on the A&R singles market shares with a
10.9% score. Polydor’s own A&R interests were led by three tracks by overseas acts signed to the UK company, two from Lana Del Rey (Video Games and Born To Die) and one from Barbadians Cover Drive (Twilight) whose releases go through the Global Talent label. Polydor had a fourth-placed
9.4% A&R singles share in the quarter and were joined in the Top 10 companies by fellow Universal operation Mercury whose 5.5% share in eighth place included hits by Pixie Lott, Redlight and Maverick Sabre. In all Universal scooped up a
41.0% sales share of the quarter’s Top 100 non-catalogue singles by UK-signed or A&R’d acts, more than double that of second-placed Sony (20.1%). Sony’s score included a 5.6% contribution from Epic led by Olly
Murs’ Dance With Me Tonight, while EMI finished comfortably ahead of Warner as the third top corporate group with 16.0%. This included a 5.0% share from Parlophone whose two biggest domestic-sourced singles were both by Coldplay. Warner’s 9.4% A&R singles
share was largely down to Atlantic and, in particular, Ed Sheeran whose biggest Q1 hit Drunk sold nearly 200,000 copies. Atlantic was the fifth top A&R singles company with a 7.8% share, while Ministry of Sound was sixth with a 6.1% share headed by DJ Fresh’s second UK chart-topper Hot Right Now, featuring Rita Ora. XL rounded off the Top 10
companies in 10th place with a 3.7% share made up entirely of five Adele tracks, the biggest being Someone Like You.
Source: Official Charts Company/Music Week research
Data source: Official Charts Company/Music Week research
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