14 MusicWeek 06.09.13 BUSINESSANALYSIS
TOP INDEPENDENT SINGLES POS ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL (POSITION OVERALL) PASSENGER Let Her Go Nettwerk (8) ADELE Skyfall XL (12)
1 2
3 4 5 6
7 8 9
MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS FEAT. WANZ Thrift Shop Macklemore (15)
MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS FEAT. RAY DALTON Can’t Hold Us Macklemore (25)
JUSTICE COLLECTIVE He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother Metropolis (43)
DUKE DUMONT FEAT A*M*E Need U (100 Percent)Ministry of Sound (46)
CHRIS MALINCHAK So Good To Me Ministry of Sound (74)
BINGO PLAYERS FEAT. FAR EAST MOVEMENT Get Up (Rattle) Ministry of Sound (79)
BAAUER Harlem Shake Mad Decent (82) 10 DJ FRESH Gold Dust Ministry of Sound (95)
The above shows top-selling independent singles between chart week 35 2012 and chart week 34 2013 and in brackets where they ranked among all singles releases source: Official Charts Company data/Music Week research
region of 860,000 copies sold so far. The Passenger track has made up the bulk of
Nettwerk’s singles sales over the last 12 months, making it the fourth biggest independent player behind MoS (1.6% share of the entire market), XL Beggars (1.5%) and Macklemore (0.8%), the label behind Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s self-releases, including Thrift Shop and Can’t Hold Us. Domino released seven of the 100 top indie
singles of the last year, all of them Arctic Monkeys recordings and led by Do I Wanna Know with sales just short of 200,000. Infectious’s four tracks are similarly dominated by one act, Alt-J, but their top seller in the past 12 months is Temper Trap’s 2009 hit Sweet Disposition, which has had another 45,000 takers in this time. Some other indie labels have scored an isolated
big seller over the last year, including Metropolis Recordings with its Justice Collective charity cover of He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother, which topped the 2012 Christmas chart, Mad Decent with Baauer’s Harlem Shake, Dirty Hit with The 1975’s Chocolate and Demon, which scored a surprise first ever No.1 single in March with a revival of the 1994 hit Let’s Get Ready To Rhumble by PJ & Duncan. Overall indie labels collectively sold around 32.7
million singles in the 12 months leading up to this year’s AIM Awards, representing 18.2% of the entire market. This is just behind Sony (22.2%) with Universal (39.5%) significantly out in front, while the independents’ singles sales have grown 20.4% year-on-year, nearly six times as fast (3.5%) as the entire market.
ACTS MIGRATING FROM MAJORS TO INDIES
Around a quarter of the 100 biggest independent artist albums of the past year are new studio sets by acts previously signed to a major. In most cases the artists in question issued their
last album through one of the majors, but whether deliberately or through having been dropped now make their home with an indie label. They are hardly the first acts to shift from a major to an indie, but what is new is the sheer number of them now doing it. In some cases the result has been their most
successful album in some time. Examples include Stereophonics who went from being independently signed on V2 to part of Universal when their label was bought, but returned to the indie world on their
ABOVE 100 per cent a hit | Duke Dumont is behind one of the biggest indie singles of the year
TOP INDEPENDENT SINGLES GROUPS MINISTRY OF SOUND 8.8% XL BEGGARS 8.1% MACKLEMORE 4.2% NETTWERK 3.0% DOMINO 1.9% DEMON 1.9% METROPOLIS GROUP 1.2% DIRTY HIT 0.9% PIAS 0.9%
MAD DECENT 0.9% The above shows share of independent singles market between chart week 35 2012 and chart week 34 2013 source: Official Charts Company data/Music Week research
RIGHT
Queens of indie | Queens Of The Stone Age had their highest charting UK album after leaving Universal for Matador
own Stylus label via Ignition with Graffiti On The Train, released in March. It is the fifth top-selling indie artist album of the last 12 months, according to the Official Charts Company, and has already sold more copies than any of the band’s studio releases since 2005’s Language Sex Violence Other. Having already topped the chart with the self-
titled Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on the Mancunian’s Sour Mash label, Ignition has followed a deal with Stereophonics and scored hit albums with other one-time major signings Primal Scream and Justin Currie. After switching from Universal-owned
Interscope to XL Beggars-affiliated Matador, Queens Of The Stone Age achieved their highest- charting album yet in the UK in June with …Like Clockwork, which has also sold at a faster rate than predecessor Era Vulgaris. Several companies have each been behind a
handful of these migrations from major to indie, among them Cooking Vinyl, Kobalt and PIAS. In both Cooking Vinyl and Kobalt’s cases it has mainly or exclusively been label services deals with Cooking Vinyl attracting the likes of Alison Moyet and sending her into the UK albums Top 10 for the first time in nearly nine years. Kobalt Label Services has so far led three artists
into the weekly Top 10 – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Pet Shop Boys and Travis – and in each instance it has been either the act’s highest- charting album to date (Cave) or best placed in a number of years. PIAS through PIAS Recordings has lured the
likes of The Darkness, Editors and Texas, while BMG’s signatures have included Bryan Ferry.
TOP INDEPENDENT ARTIST ALBUMS POS ARTIST/ TITLE / LABEL (POSITION OVERALL)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9
PASSENGER All The Little Lights Nettwerk (38) ALT-J An Awesome Wave Infectious (39) THE XX Coexist XL (41) ADELE 21 XL (42)
STEREOPHONICS Graffiti On The Train Stylus (45) EVA CASSIDY The Best Of Blix Street (51)
MICHAEL BUBLE Sings Totally Blonde Metro (54)
CARO EMERALD The Shocking Miss Emerald Dramatico/Grand Mono (69)
TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB Beacon Kitsune (71) 10 EXAMPLE The Evolution Of Man Ministry of Sound (92)
The above shows top-selling independent artist albums between chart week 35 2012 and chart week 34 2013 and in brackets where they ranked among all artist album releases source: Official Charts Company data/Music Week research
TOP INDEPENDENT ALBUM GROUPS MINISTRY OF SOUND 13.2% XL BEGGARS 7.8% DEMON 6.2% UNION SQUARE 3.2% DOMINO 1.6% PIAS 1.5% COOKING VINYL 1.4% DELTA 1.4% INFECTIOUS 1.3%
NETTWERK 1.3% The above shows share of independent albums market of full- and mid-price titles between chart week 35 2012 and chart week 34 2013 source: Official Charts Company data/Music Week research
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Catalogue specialist Union Square signed Michael Ball after a lengthy spell with Universal and he reached No.8 with Both Sides Now, while Demon’s roster of ex-major names includes Deacon Blue and The Soldiers. In some cases - as with Suede - acts once with a major have put out a new album directly themselves. The traffic between majors and indies has not
been one way, though, and the independent sector has lost some of its most successful acts to big rivals over the last year or so. Frank Turner and his Xtra Mile label went to Universal’s Polydor after his last breakthrough album England Keep My Bones through PIAS, while Example quit Ministry of Sound for Sony-owned Epic and Two Door Cinema Club moved from Kitsune to become one of the first Parlophone signings under Warner ownership.
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