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08.06.12 MusicWeek 13
TELEVISION BY PAUL WILLIAMS
T
he Voice UK’s mission statement from day one was to find the nation’s next top vocal talent, but its immediate boost to the music
industry has been swelling back catalogue sales. From the moment the talent show debuted on BBC One on March 24 it was clear it would have a substantial impact on those watching, inspiring a number of them to go online and download the original versions of the songs the hopefuls were performing. In the first full week after that introductory
programme aired the hit recordings of 11 of the 12 songs featured saw their weekly sales rise by at least double-digit percentages with coach Jessie J’s Island/Lava track Mamma Knows Best leading the way as demand for it accelerated five-fold. There was also a sizable pick-up in sales for Columbia act Train’s 2001 hit Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me) which, on the back of contestant Phil Poole’s performance, lifted in demand by 153.9% week-on-week to re- enter the Official UK singles chart at 53. As proved to be the case with other songs
featured in the series, weekly sales of the Train tune continued to build in subsequent weeks, taking it as high as 34 on the weekly countdown and selling an extra 50,000 copies. In that first show there were also immediate big sales gains for tracks including Parlophone act Coldplay’s Trouble (up 70.1% week-on-week), the Island/Lava-issued Price Tag by Jessie J featuring B.o.B. (up 61.4%) and V2/Universal-handled Maybe Tomorrow by Stereophonics (up 51.3%). Assessing the precise impact on sales of songs
featured in the series is not an exact science as there may be other reasons why demand for a track increased other than because of exposure on The Voice. However, to overcome that as much as possible, in trying to work out how many extra sales the show has generated while on air we have eliminated from our analysis any current or recent songs that were featured, such as the Adele hit Set Fire To The Rain and Emeli Sandé’s Heaven. Instead our analysis is confined to the sales impact of older tracks covered in the show. For each of these tracks we have calculated their
average weekly sales in the UK this year, according to the Official Charts Company, up to the week of
being in The Voice and then worked out how many additional sales on top of that average they sold during the subsequent weeks the series was broadcast. What clearly emerges is a huge increase in demand for the hit recordings of songs featured in the programme and The Voice is able to claim at the very least it has been responsible for delivering around an extra 600,000 one-track download sales while on air. Leading the way is John Legend’s 2005 Sony- issued hit Ordinary People, which clearly benefited by uniquely being performed twice in the same episode, firstly by Becky Hill and then by Jaz Ellington. Following the April 14 broadcast, in the few remaining hours left that Saturday night before the new sales chart was put to bed Ordinary People rapidly grew its weekly sales to 11,857 units, according to the Official Charts Company, having sold just 155 copies in total the previous week. In the next week it then sold another 50,000 units and climbed to No.4 on the chart. Since its exposure on The Voice Ordinary People has sold around 120,000 extra copies, more than doubling its cumulative UK total. Although no song featured in the show has quite come near to having the sales impact Ordinary People has, others have accumulated decent extra business that would never have happened without The Voice. They include coach Danny O’Donoghue and his band The Script’s 2008 Phonogenic/Sony hit The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, which has sold around an extra 90,000 copies since featuring, Stereophonics’ Universal- handled Dakota and Infectious signings Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition. Sweet Disposition was one of 22 tracks to re- enter or crack the weekly Official Top 75 singles chart as a result of being covered in The Voice. This list also includes Tom Petty’s 1989 MCA/Universal track Free Fallin’, which hit a new chart peak of 59 after contestant Max Milner performed it. The May 5 episode featuring Free Fallin’ was also the last one of the series that managed to clock up an overnight audience rating above 8 million, according to BARB, with 8.2 million people tuning in. That figure itself was significantly down on the show’s 10.7 million peak achieved on April 14 and as the overnight ratings dropped below 6 million and then under 5 million The Voice’s ability to
BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT AND RASCAL FLATTS
BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT’s wider focus beyond music meant it having far less impact on back catalogue sales than The Voice. But the ITV1 show did finally deliver US country superstars Rascal Flatts (left) a break- through UK hit single a dozen years after their first release. After being performed by contestant Sam
Kelly, who finished ninth in the final, their EMI-issued 2004 cut Bless This Broken Road rose as high as 41 on the Official UK singles chart. Among the other songs which enjoyed
chart revivals following exposure on BGT was This Woman’s Work, which turned up in the Top 75 in both its original Fish People/EMI- issued Kate Bush version and Maxwell’s RCA-handled cover after contestant Hope Murphy performed it.
PUBLISHERS SERIES SUCCESSES
No Train, no gain: The US veterans helped EMI to publishing success courtesy of The Voice
EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING has emerged as its sector’s biggest winner from The Voice with more than 50 of the company’s copyrights featured across the series. A Music Week analysis of the songs performed by contestants on the reality show found an unrivalled 25 of them were exclusively controlled by EMI Publishing, including the Train hit Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me), Stevie Wonder’s Superstition, We Found Love penned by Calvin Harris for Rihanna and Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill. It also shares the copyright in 33 other songs covered in season one. More than 40 songs from
Universal Music Publishing’s catalogues were covered in the show, 19 controlled exclusively
such as Stereophonics hits Dakota and Maybe Tomorrow, Maroon 5’s She Will Be Loved and Jack Johnson’s Better Together. Sony/ATV saw 32 of its songs
featured, 15 of which it looks after 100%, among them Ed Sheeran’s You Need Me I Don’t Need You, 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up written by the band’s Linda Perry and The Beatles’ Let It Be. Warner/Chappell’s 24 songs
featured included Michael Jackson’s Beat It, Muse’s Starlight penned by frontman Matt Bellamy and Radiohead’s High and Dry, all of which it looks after exclusively. BMG Chrysalis’s interests in 22 songs in The Voice included Ordinary People, while Kobalt had a presence on 14 songs and Imagem eight, including exclusively Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition.
deliver back catalogue sales naturally lessened. These audience falls generally resulted in songs
featured in the latter weeks of the series experiencing less-robust sales increases than those that cropped up in earlier weeks. But, while that was disappointing, there is no denying that across the entire series The Voice has delivered substantial extra download sales that would never have happened if it had not been on air.
STAR GUESTS DELIVERING IMPACT ON SALES
THE VOICE QUICKLY DEMONSTRATED its power as a promotional tool for guest artists such as Lana Del Rey (left) and Emeli Sandé, although arguably its sales influence waned as ratings started to dip. As the guest on the programme’s first results show aired on April 29 Del Rey saw weekly sales of her Polydor debut Born To Die hike by 43% to move it 3-2 on the Official UK artist albums chart, while the following week Virgin act Emeli Sandé’s performance made an even bigger impact with weekly sales of her album Our Version Of Events rising by 79% as it climbed 8-2 on the chart. Among the other star performers, an appearance by
RCA act Paloma Faith (left) helped to deliver her a first ever UK Top 10 single with Picking Up The Pieces. Four of The Voice’s eight guest stars during the series are signed to the show’s industry partner Universal, two to EMI and one apiece to Sony and Warner. By comparison the six musical guests during this season’s Britain’s Got Talent semi-finals and final were equally split between Universal and Syco’s parent record group Sony.
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