LABELS frontline
Magic moments: BMG’s reshaped roster powers streaming growth
Kylie Minogue and KSI lead the company’s strong performance with UK label president Alistair Norbury targeting “consistent” single hits in 2021 BY ANDRE PAINE
BMG’s Alistair Norbury has told Music Week that the company will build on last year’s streaming surge with more digital-focused campaigns in 2021. While BMG established its UK business by signing
heritage acts whose sales are dominated by physical, it has evolved in recent years and powered ahead in the track streams market for 2020. According to Official Charts Company data, the
No.4 music company grew track streams by 25% year-on-year compared to market growth of 18%. Market share increased from 1.2% to 1.3% as BMG racked up 1.58bn streams, compared to 1.27bn in 2019. “We have ambitions to continue the streaming
growth,” said Norbury, BMG UK’s president, repertoire & marketing. “The type of acts and the flavour of the roster will continue to include a healthy mix of the established iconic artists we’re known for. “But after KSI’s success, there’s a strong appetite
to start being more consistent and not have sporadic single hits. So there will be more coming in that lane.” BMG had the biggest breakthrough debut of 2020 with UK rapper KSI’s Dissimulation (see The Music Week Interview, p36). The album’s 84,006 sales last year were dominated by streams (88.7% of the total). BMG’s biggest LP of the year was Kylie Minogue’s
Disco, a Q4 release that was No.33 overall in 2020 (112,916 sales last year, including 9,304 from streams). “While the market was restricted, and a lot of our
traditional BMG repertoire, such as The Shires for instance, was impacted by the close of physical retail [during the Covid-19 lockdowns], we saw the digital business of BMG growing strongly, not only here but internationally,” said Norbury. “For Kylie, the worldwide streams on this album
are at about three times the rate of the previous record, Golden. So last year was about, ‘Can you grow an artist to the next level?’ After the huge success we had with Kylie and Golden, and then with the best of [2019’s Step Back In Time], to continue that trajectory upwards was terrific.” Minogue secured chart entries for singles on the
Disco campaign, including Magic (No.53, 46,986 sales), Say Something (No.56, 75,555 sales) and Real Groove with Dua Lipa (No.95, 24,730 sales). Norbury suggested that Disco was the right kind of album at the right moment during the pandemic. “It dropped at the time when an uptempo, feelgood record was what people needed – and you saw that with Dua Lipa and various other records,” he said. “So there was momentum.” While the campaign had to adjust to the pandemic,
Norbury said that digital marketing ultimately helped deliver stronger sales than Golden in 2018. “There is a big question mark over how we’re
going to go back to marketing and promoting music internationally [after Covid], because we’re successfully seeing sales increase without artists necessarily having to fly around the world and be
08 | Music Week
“Disco dropped when people needed a
feelgood record”
Alistair Norbury BMG
Golden years: Kylie Minogue performing the Infinite Disco livestream and (below) Steps
everywhere at once, which is good,” he said. Minogue – a Music Week cover star in October
– remains committed to the Disco campaign and building her streaming audience, added Norbury. “There is a hunger,” he told Music Week. “This
record lends itself very nicely to remixes, features and collaborations. “We partnered on the successful livestream
[Infinite Disco] that we did with Driift. We’re looking at ways that we can maintain this campaign all through the year. There are a lot more ideas to come – and many of them, creatively, come from the artist, which is very exciting.” BMG was stable last year based on the OCC
AES results for All Music All Albums (2.1% market share, unchanged) and All Music Artist Albums (2.0% market share, also unchanged). The company
grew its share of the declining market for album sales. Artist Album Sales market share increased from 4.4% in 2019 to 5.2% in 2020, while All Album Sales was up from 4.5% to 5.4%. While Norbury
stressed that BMG is “aware of where
physical is going” based on the long-term trend for decline, the company still had a huge Q4. Artist album sales soared by 39% year-on-year to 579,722, as the company increased Q4 market share from 4.6% in 2019 to 7.3% in 2020. As well as landing the fifth biggest album of Q4 with Disco, BMG had Steps’ What The Future Holds at No.19 for the quarter (61,670 sales) and Top 50 entries for McFly and Shakin’ Stevens. “The Steps campaign carries on all year until their hoped for shows at the end of 2021,” said Norbury “There’s more repertoire, there’s a very exciting feature track coming imminently. “It means that, together with the management
team, we’re able to take the space [in the schedule] that’s there and come up with more initiatives. It feels like a return to several decades ago, where you could have a longer promotion and marketing period before the band disappear on tour.” BMG has plans for new releases from Van
Morrison, Suede, Texas, Gary Numan, Richard Ashcroft, Garbage and Natalie Imbruglia, alongside more streaming-focused projects from Maya Jane Coles, Ry X, Kamille and KSI. “I don’t think anybody expected BMG to have success in the digital streaming space on that level, coming from a label that has traditionally focused on our Radio 2 repertoire,” said Norbury. “With KSI and the other acts coming, we are
now very comfortable competing in both lanes, which is fantastic.”
musicweek.com
PHOTO: Barbara Dietl
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