www.musicweek.com
14.09.12 Music Week 15
RCA BOOSTS BARLOW
a release from RCA-affiliated Syco not by a reality show graduate. It had 85,948 takers in the quarter to stand as the company’s second top domestically- sourced seller, although RCA’s other top sellers were mainly by X Factor breakthroughs, including One Direction, Rebecca Ferguson and Marcus Collins, indicating the A&R reconfiguration is very much work in progress. Above RCA, Island’s A&R market share rose
from 14.9% to 18.2% between quarters as it added not only another chart-topping Keane album to its previous successes in the market but also experienced new commercial peaks from a pair of albums first released many months before. Alex Clare’s The Lateness Of The Hour had been issued back in July last year, selling just 933 copies first week, but in Q2 it entered the weekly Top 75 for the first time on the back of the single Too Close’s success and sold enough to finish as the period’s 43rd top artist seller. It was a similar story with Ben Howard’s Every
Kingdom which, though debuting at seven on the chart following its September 2011 release, got into a new rhythm in Q2 with a return to the Top 10 and 78,277 copies sold. Polydor slipped from second to third place
between quarters as its market share dropped from 12.8% to 10.1%. As in Q1, Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die was the company’s top UK-sourced seller, but with just 35.9% of the sales it achieved in 2012’s opening period. There were also new albums from Cheryl Cole and New York’s Scissor Sisters – who are UK signed – but their respective opening sales tallies were significantly down on what previous
Q2 2012 UK A&R PERFORMANCE BY CORPORATE GROUP
A&R market shares are compiled from Top 100 Q2 charts of the biggest-selling non-catalogue singles and artist albums by UK-signed or A&R’d artists. Catalogue covers all retrospectives or studio albums two or more years old when the quarter began
Universal 46.8% SINGLES
SONY 16.0% EMI 15.5% WARNER 13.0% OTHERS 8.7%
with an 8.3% A&R share. Like Polydor, Virgin had risen in Q1 with the
ALBUMS
Universal 42.7% SONY 18.1% EMI 13.4% WARNER 9.9% OTHERS 15.9%
releases had achieved. Atlantic delivered new studio albums in
the quarter from Marina & The Diamonds and Rumour but it was Ed Sheeran’s + that yet again provided the biggest sales, shifting nearly 150,000 more copies and the main reason why the Warner company climbed from sixth to fourth spot in the A&R rankings with a 9.7% share. Decca dazzled in Q1 with Military Wives’ album debut In My Dreams, which climbed to No 1 and sold 150,738 copies in four weeks. That helped it to finish as the eighth top albums company with UK originated repertoire, but the Universal division flew even higher in Q2 with, in Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth Band’s Sing, the period’s biggest new release. It sold 162,518 copies in the quarter and led Decca to fifth place
SINGLES FOCUS N-DUBZ ENCOURAGE SOLO ROLES
Tulisa’s chart-topping debut in Q2 confirmed N-Dubz as solo stars are far bigger singles market draws than the group collectively ever were. The entry of her first non-band hit Young
at No.1 in May made her the second member of the trio after Dappy to get her UK singles chart career off to a perfect start. Although their colleague Fazer has now ended that run with his inaugural solo single peaking at 17 at the beginning of September, two members of a group having No.1 singles with their debut solo releases is something the line-ups of the likes of The Beatles, Take That or Spice Girls never managed to achieve. For Island Records it is providing a very
healthy source of UK-originated hit singles as part of its relationship with All Around The World, something that never happened with N-Dubz. Although the group’s three studio albums were gold or platinum sellers, they only ever scored one top five single: I Need You in 2009. Young was Island’s second top domestic single in Q2, behind only Alex Clare’s Too Close, and helped it to outperform its two nearest rivals combined on Music Week’s league table ranking record companies by sales of the quarter’s Top 100 non-
catalogue singles by UK-signed or A&R’d acts.
Its share of these sales in the period was 26.7%, up from 24.1% in Q1, leaving second- and third-placed companies Polydor (11.3%) and Atlantic (11.2%) trailing a long way behind. Polydor’s own share was up from 9.4% in the last quarter when it finished fourth and its improvement included Cheryl’s Call My Name, which sold 270,073 copies during the quarter’s last three weeks. Its other big hitters included two tracks through Global Talent: Cover Drive’s Sparks and Lawson’s When She Was Mine. Atlantic was also in the ascendance,
rising from fifth to bronze position as Asylum/Black Butter’s Rudimental featuring John Newman single Feel The Love became an instant No 1 and Marina & The Diamonds hit a new career singles chart peak with Primadonna Girl reaching 11. RCA’s UK A&R gains on albums were contradicted by it dropping from second to fourth on singles with a 10.0% share led by Paloma Faith’s Picking Up The Pieces and three Labrinth cuts, while Parlophone moved from ninth to fifth and increased its share from 5.0% to 9.0% as Conor Maynard arrived on the scene and Coldplay delivered again.
Tulisa
release of a blockbuster debut album – in this case Emeli Sande’s Our Version Of Events – but with reduced sales of its top seller and nothing new of a real commercial consequence it slipped from third to sixth position with a 7.3% share. Sister EMI operation Parlophone, meanwhile, rose to seventh position with 5.8% as Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto was accompanied by new albums from Richard Hawley and Sigur Ros. A year earlier XL had dominated Music Week’s A&R album shares with a 25.1% share as Adele’s 21 finished as the market’s top seller. The album did the same again in Q2 2012 but with far reduced sales XL ranked in just eighth position with a 5.8% share. Mercury almost matched its 5.5% Q1 score with a 5.4% share this time, which included Vertigo act Amy Macdonald’s third studio set Life In A Beautiful Light. Debuting at No 2, it sold nearly 50,000 copies in the quarter to finish as the 35th top artist seller. Meanwhile, Epic moved back into the Top 10 A&R albums companies in 10th place with Olly Murs’ In Case You Didn’t Know leading
ABOVE
Quiet Earth: While Q2 didn’t break too many records, Labrinth’s Electronic Earth had plenty of commercial merit
the way. With three of the top five albums, Universal
lifted its overall share from 38.4% to 42.7% of sales of the biggest UK-sourced albums, while Sony’s share rose marginally to 18.1%. EMI kept third place with 15.5% as Warner (13.0%) significantly narrowed the gap and the indie share dropped from 18.7% to 15.9%.
Dappy
Emeli Sandé’s Next To Me was Virgin’s
top UK-sourced single for a second successive period, but with quarterly sales dropping from 384,823 to 141,974 the record company as a consequence slipped down the A&R rankings. Third last time, it ranked sixth in Q2 with a 6.6% share. Columbia returned to the Top 10 in
seventh place with 4.4% thanks mainly to Calvin Harris’ Let’s Go featuring Ne-Yo, while Ministry of Sound was unable to come near its Q1 6.1% share as it dropped to eighth with 4.1%. Its UK repertoire showing was led by two DJ Fresh singles: The Power and Hot Right Now. Not normally known for having hit singles, Decca has now had two chart- toppers in the space of 12 months with Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth
Band’s Sing in June following on from its Christmas No 1 Wherever You Are by Military Wives/Gareth Malone. Sing achieved 264,192 sales in Q2 to place Decca ninth on the singles A&R rankings with 3.9%. Mercury’s 10th-placed 2.6% included
Overload by Dot Rotten featuring TMS and helped parent group Universal claim a whopping 46.8% of the sales of the 100 biggest current hits by UK-signed or A&R’d acts. This was up from 41.0% in Q1 and more than the three other majors managed combined with Sony down from 20.1% to 16.0%, EMI slipping from 16.0% to 15.5% and Warner recovering from 9.4% to 13.0%. The indie share dropped between quarters from 13.5% to 8.7% as most of the big sellers came from the majors.
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