Music Sales Post-Grammys/Whitney

[rick]

www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/arts/music/whitney-houstons-death-leads-to-surging-music-sales.html?ref=arts

The New York Times

A Death, and Then Surging Music Sales

By BEN SISARIO

A mix of triumph and tragedy helped make the Grammy Awards on Sunday the second-most-watched broadcast in Grammys history. The same effect was clear in record sales, with big gains for Adele, the night’s champion, and for Whitney Houston, the pop goddess whose death the day before cast a somber shadow over the ceremony.

Following a pattern familiar from the death of Michael Jackson, Ms. Houston’s music rocketed back on the charts and radio playlists as news of her death spread. For the week that ended Sunday, Ms. Houston had a nearly 60-fold increase in album sales, virtually all of it digital, and equivalent boosts in track downloads and online streaming.

She sold 101,000 albums in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, compared with 1,700 the week before, and 91,000 of those albums were sold digitally; she also had 887,000 downloads of individual tracks, up from 15,000 the week before. “I Will Always Love You,” the most popular song, was downloaded 195,000 times, and from Saturday to Monday it had 2,137 spins on the radio, up from 134 during the same period the week before, according to BDS, Nielsen’s radio monitoring arm.

Spotify, the online music service, said that on Sunday there were 2.4 million streams of Ms. Houston’s songs, up 4,000 percent from the day before.

At her peak in the 1980s and ’90s Ms. Houston was one of pop’s dominant sellers, with 11 No. 1 hits and 55 million album sales in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. But in recent years her career had stalled, and, like Jackson’s, her public image was often more associated with tawdry tabloid headlines than with her music. Her last Top 10 hit, in 2001, was a rerelease of her Super Bowl performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” from 10 years before.

With a low sales baseline Ms. Houston’s numbers last week were not enough to give her the top-selling album. Her collection “Whitney: The Greatest Hits” (Arista) reached No. 6 on Billboard’s latest album chart with 64,000 sales, up from only about 600 the week before.

Her death brought Ms. Houston back to the spotlight, but some in the music industry questioned how long the interest would last.

“For a few weeks, or during the course of the fascination with the news cycle, you’re going to continue to see a sales spike,” said Bill Werde, editorial director of Billboard. “But ultimately radio is going to stop playing Whitney all the time and return to playing her sometimes, and sales will probably fall back pretty substantially.”

By comparison Jackson — whose music, like Ms. Houston’s, is released by divisions of Sony — had a 40-fold increase in album sales during the week of his death in June 2009, to 422,000, though only 57 percent of those sales were digital, SoundScan reported at the time. But fueled by coverage in the news media and the release of his concert film “Michael Jackson’s This Is It” that fall, he ended up the top-selling artist of the year, with 8.3 million albums.

Adele, who took six Grammys on Sunday, including the top prizes of album, record and song of the year, posted the biggest numbers of the week. Her album “21” (XL/Columbia), a juggernaut since it was released 51 weeks ago, sold 237,000 copies, pushing it to No. 1 for the 20th week; it tied “The Bodyguard” soundtrack — a showcase for Ms. Houston, featuring “I Will Always Love You” — which also had a 20-week run in the top slot in the early 1990s.

Though sales of Adele’s music were already strong, the exposure from the Grammys always provides a bump to the show’s winners and performers. In recent years, with the rise of digital music and traffic on social media networks, that effect has come earlier and earlier in Grammy week, but the sales spike extends even into the show itself, with numerous online retailers saying that many searches and sales come during the broadcast.

Van Halen’s album “A Different Kind of Truth” (Interscope) led an influx of new releases at No. 2 with 187,000 sales. The 41st volume of the compilation series “Now That’s What I Call Music!” opened at No. 3 with 142,000; the Fray’s latest, “Scars & Stories” (Epic), reached No. 4 with 87,000; and Paul McCartney’s “Kisses on the Bottom” (Hear Music) reached No. 5 with 74,000.

[erik]

I don't deny the sales figures spike for Whitney is going to be enormous, though perhaps not enough to short circuit the spike for Adele after her six-for-six Grammy sweep.

But I think there's a question that should be raised: Are the people who'll be buying Whitney's music now die-hard fans who have always been there for her, or are they merely casual record buyers who may never have cared for her, and are only buying her music now that she's no longer alive?

It kind of makes a person wonder....

[Partridge]

Apparently it has always been human nature to appreciate
someone after they are no longer with us.

Any Whitney Houston albums I would have wanted I would have
bought while she was alive.

I remember I used to like Jim Croce. I enjoyed his music, but I
didn't think he was a "great" artist. But when he died and
became so popular that his music was everywhere, I got to the
point I hated to hear his voice. He became vastly overrated, in
my opinion. It took me about 20 years before I wanted to hear
him again. But I would never ever want to hear "Time in a
Bottle"- dreck!

On the other hand, I haven't heard Whitney Houston once
since her death. But then again, I don't listen to the radio.

[erik]

Quote by Partridge:

On the other hand, I haven't heard Whitney Houston once
since her death. But then again, I don't listen to the radio.

Short comment: Rimshot (LOL).

[fabtastique]

I have quite a few Whitney albums, she was part of my youth - I was 17 when her first album came out. I've been listening to her albums quite a lot since her death and I do feel quite sad about the situation she found herself in at the end. No blame, just sorrow.

[Dianna]

I don't own any whitney houston music, nor do I plan on purchasing any as I've pretty much made it clear that while I respect her talent (mariah too) I am not and never will be a fan of that type of music, I did hear a few songs by her on the radio the other morning and I did get a little choked up, and I listened to the entire song and remembered the pretty young singer from back in the mid 80's.. it brought back memories..

[Deleted]

There is a big difference between Whitney and Michael Jackson as far as what happens to their estates.. MJ wrote most of his songs, whereas Whitney did not.. therefore very little of Whitney's posthumous sales affect the worth of her estate..

[erik]

And about the old saw that Death is a great publicity tool for a performer--I doubt that it'll be much of one for Whitney, like it was (for a few months) for MJ, or has been for Elvis since August 16, 1977. For one thing, there's no actual "shrine" where fans can go to pay tribute to her, except for the makeshift one at the Beverly Hilton, which is, unfortunately, where she died, and that's kind of morbid (IMHO).

[sliderocker]

Feb 16, 2012 18:44:21 GMT -5 @robertaxel said:

There is a big difference between Whitney and Michael Jackson as far as what happens to their estates.. MJ wrote most of his songs, whereas Whitney did not.. therefore very little of Whitney's posthumous sales affect the worth of her estate..

The difference here wil be whether Arista pushes Whitney's back catalogue for all that it's worth. MJ writing most of his songs has no bearing on the sales other than it was a few extra pennies pouring into his estate. Elvis wrote very few songs but that didn't and doesn't affect the sales of his albums. Another difference will be the fan base: how will Whitney's fan base compare to MJ's or to Elvis's or to John Lennon's or any other deceased artist with large sales? If a base is there, Whitney's back catalogue may see a resurgence in sales but the thing is there are any number of people who will buy her albums just cause she's dead, much like there were people who bought Jackson's albums and Elvis's albums and son on. They buy them not necessarily as fans but as people who think the record companies will delete those albums and they'll be worth a lot of money someday. Of course, some are fair weather fans, the kind who will talk about how much they liked that artist but never bought a recording by them while they were living. Which one is worse? Those who buy recordings by a deceased person as an investment or the fair weather fan who couldn't be bothered to buy the albums when the artist was living? Not much difference between the two, if you ask me. Both are phonies.

[sliderocker]

Feb 16, 2012 13:51:10 GMT -5 Partridge said:

Apparently it has always been human nature to appreciate
someone after they are no longer with us.

Any Whitney Houston albums I would have wanted I would have
bought while she was alive.

I remember I used to like Jim Croce. I enjoyed his music, but I
didn't think he was a "great" artist. But when he died and
became so popular that his music was everywhere, I got to the
point I hated to hear his voice. He became vastly overrated, in
my opinion. It took me about 20 years before I wanted to hear
him again. But I would never ever want to hear "Time in a
Bottle"- dreck!

On the other hand, I haven't heard Whitney Houston once
since her death. But then again, I don't listen to the radio.

To me, Jim Croce didn't live long enough to see what his potential could've been. There's always a sense that when a performer dies too soon, that they would've gone on to have done greater things and that the public was somehow cheated of seeing that performer live up to the public's imagined potential. That was certainly the case with Buddy Holly, but no one can say with certainity whether any deceased performer might have gone on to a greater glory had they lived. You don't know the potential. They might have gone on to greater things or they might have faded away as fast as their star had risen.

Btw, on the college tour Jim Croce was on when he was killed in the plane crash, he had been at the college in my hometown just a couple of days before the crash. His death a couple of days later freaked people in my hometown out real good, even those like me, who didn't get to go to his show. It would've been nice if Jim had gone to have been a bigger star but there's no way anyone could ever know whether that would've happened.