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THE BUSINESS OF MUSIC
www.musicweek.com
NEWS 03
10
PRS’ membership is now just shy of 100,000 - more than twice what it was five years ago
Back at the helm of RCA, Colin Barlow talks about the revival of a legendary label
08.06.12 £5.15 VIEWING FIGURES MAY HAVE FADED BUT THE VOICE HAS GIVEN MAJOR BOOST TO SINGLES MARKET
Sales spike softens Voice ratings slide BIG INTERVIEW
14 The tenth Download
takes place this weekend - and it still rocks
MEDIA BY PAUL WILLIAMS
T
he Voice has given a huge boost to back catalogue singles sales with exclusive
Music Week research revealing 600,000 one-track downloads were snapped up as a direct result of the show.
As the post-mortem begins
on series one, which concluded last Saturday night with Leanne Mitchell winning the final, the newly-unveiled analysis throws the spotlight on one clearly positive benefit of the BBC One show to the music industry. Led by John Legend’s 2005
Sony hit Ordinary People, which has sold an additional 120,000 copies in the UK after being covered on The Voice, a number of tracks have enjoyed spectacular new leases of life at retail thanks to covers by the contestants. However, despite this clear lift to the industry by the programme, which Music Week estimates directly delivered at least 600,000 sales to the singles
market while the series aired, the jury remains firmly out on the success of The Voice’s first season in the UK. While it started strongly and grew its ratings during the first few weeks, reaching an overnight peak of 10.7 million for the episode aired on April 14, audience numbers then started to fall and dropped to as low as 4.5 million,
according to BARB figures. The final last Saturday attracted an average audience of 7.1 million, peaking at 8.7 million.
The steep slide in ratings has
already prompted the show’s creator John de Mol to suggest changes need to happen for the second series, although he said he was “thrilled” with the four coaches Jessie J, Danny
LIVE
record company Island at midnight last Saturday, just hours after the series concluded and had sold around 6,500 copies by the end of business last Tuesday, according to the Official Charts Company. This placed the track, which is not being released physically, at number 27 on midweek sales rankings. Its retail start compares to
Voice of the people: Winner Leanne Mitchell with her coach, Tom Jones
O’Donoghue,
will.i.am and Tom Jones, who mentored winner Leanne Mitchell.
Another test of the show’s
popularity and its impact on those watching is the roll-out of the first single by Mitchell, a cover of the Whitney Houston hit Run To You. This was released digitally by The Voice’s global music partner Universal’s
2011 X Factor winners Little Mix’s debut Syco release selling around 70,000 copies during its first couple of days on sale last December and 210,129 copies by the end of the week to enter at number one. The release of Mitchell’s single will be followed by the roll-out by Universal next week of a 12-track compilation album featuring Run To You and recordings of songs performed in the series by the other three finalists Bo Bruce, Vince Kidd and Tyler James as well as cuts by the four contestants eliminated at the
semi-final stage. See analysis pages 12-13
Prime time exposure drives coaches’ catalogues back up the charts
As the least high-profile of the coaches Danny O’Donoghue had the most to gain from The Voice and he has arguably been the show’s biggest winner commercially. Since the BBC One
programme first aired on Saturday, March 24, back catalogue sales of his Phonogenic/Sony-signed band The Script have increased significantly with their two
albums selling around six times as many copies each week as they were previously. The group’s self-titled debut, which was this year averaging around 770 sales a week prior to The Voice, has seen its sales shoot up to about 5,000 each week, while follow-up Science & Faith joined it in the Top 40. The pick-up in The Script’s singles has been even more impressive, led by The Man
Who Can’t Be Moved, which was covered on the March 31 episode by contestant David Julien and has since added around 90,000 sales to its cumulative total, according to the Official Charts Company. The impact of The Voice on Island/Lava act Jessie J has been harder to judge as her album Who You Are was already highly active in the market. However, after the first show sales of the
album increased by 141% to climb 23-5 on the chart. Interscope/ Polydor signing
will.i.am is co-writer with John Legend of Ordinary People, the series’ biggest catalogue sales success, while Tom Jones’ latest Island album Spirit In The Room was released during the show’s run. Although a Top 10 hit, its week one sales were less than a third of what 2010 predecessor Praise & Blame opened with.
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