Here’s who benefited the most from the Grammy Awards
Who benefited most from Sunday’s 59th Grammy Awards telecast?
That depends on which yardstick you use, but as usual the artists who scored performance slots generally experienced bigger immediate sales gains over actual award winners. The lucky few who won and performed during the telecast were rewarded handsomely.
English pop star Ed Sheeran’s total song sales jumped more than 37,000 units, or 166%, following his appearance on the show, leading the pack of musicians whose sales experienced the greatest increases, according to BuzzAngle’s post-Grammy sales report. Sheeran sold a total of 59,000 songs on Sunday.
The sales monitoring service compared average daily sales from the six days just before the Grammys with sales numbers posted on the day of the show.
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British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, shown at Sunday’s 59th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, posted the greatest song sales increase of all musicians who took part in this year’s ceremony.
Close behind Sheeran was Bruno Mars, who was featured in the show’s tribute to Prince. His appearance spurred more than 36,000 song sales in the aftermath of the ceremony, an uptick of 294% over those of the days leading up to the ceremony. He sold a total of 49,000 songs on Sunday.
Country singer-songwriter Keith Urban got a bump of 18,000 song sales, up 331%, followed by country newcomer Maren Morris’ 17,984 song sales (up 815%) and the Weeknd at 15,431 (up 117%).
New artist Grammy winner Chance the Rapper also presumably generated considerably increased interest in his music, but he didn’t figure into BuzzAngle’s sales figures. His debut album,“Coloring Book,” is available only as a free stream.
As for individual album sales increases, Grammy triple crown winner Adele, who took home the album, record and song awards, reaped immediate gains.
BuzzAngle reported that sales of her already-mega-selling album “25” jumped 232% to 2,825 copies on Sunday. It has now sold almost 10.2 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music, a competing industry service.
Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” did even better on Grammy night, increasing 297% with 3,272 copies sold on Sunday. Total equivalent sales for “Lemonade” now stand at 861,000 copies, Nielsen reports.
Nielsen Music’s post-Grammy figures came in along similar lines to those from BuzzAngle, with a reported 150% sales increase for “25” and a 308% jump for Adele’s single, “Hello.”
Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” scored a 267% increase and the “Formation” single bounced up 105%, based on Nielsen’s comparison to the daily averages for Friday and Saturday preceding the ceremony.
Percentage-wise, the most eye-popping increases went to artists who were comparatively low on music fans’ radar screens before the Grammy ceremony.
Veteran R&B-soul singer and songwriter William Bell posted a whopping 23,691% increase in sales of his blues classic “Born Under a Bad Sign,” according to BuzzAngle. He played the song Sunday with guitarist and singer Gary Clark Jr., and that staggering number reflected the fact that only seven copies of the song had sold the day before the Grammy Awards, jumping to just under 1,700 on Sunday.
Likewise, Bell’s overall artist sales exploded by 5,805% to 1,741, and Clark’s similarly shot up 2,146%, to 3,180.
Americana singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson, who took home the country album Grammy for his “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” saw a 1,063% increase in total song sales, with 5,173 units. Sales for the song he performed Sunday, “All Around You,” jumped 10,760%, from 20 to 2,200 on Sunday, according to Nielsen’s figures.
Prince’s former cohorts in the Time scored BuzzAngle’s only other four-figure percentage increase with sales of 1,687 units on Sunday, representing a 1,871% bump over average daily sales going into the show.
Sheeran also topped BuzzAngle’s ranking of individual songs that logged the biggest sales Sunday, as the song he performed, “Shape of You,” sold 28,714 copies Sunday, up 164%.
Ranked by unit sales behind him among the top five sellers were Mars’ “That’s What I Like” (19,339 copies, up 527%), Keith Urban’s “The Fighter” (14,824, up 1,180%), Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” (10,581, up 1,045%) and the Weeknd’s “I Feel It Coming” (10,093, up 213%).
The benefit of Grammy night wasn’t, however, the exclusive domain of winners or performers.
Sales for music of the honorees in the telecast’s three tribute numbers — Prince, the Bee Gees and George Michael — all jumped, according to BuzzAngle: 338% for Prince, 553% for Michael and 640% for the Bee Gees.
Additionally, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows,” sung by John Legend and Cynthia Erivo leading into the show’s In Memoriam segment, shot up 1,581%, Nielsen reported, with a Friday-Saturday daily average of 100 copies to 1,600 on Sunday.
Billboard even noted that fashion came into play.
Singer Joy Villa, who generated considerable attention on the red carpet with her dress emblazoned with the words “Make America Great Again” and “Trump,” sold 15,000 copies on Sunday and Monday, according to Nielsen, a dramatic increase from the “negligible amount” it had sold before her limelight moment walking the Staples Center red carpet.
Numerous Trump supporters posted messages of praise for Villa after purchasing her album “I Make the Static,” even without hearing her music. “I don’t know this artist, but it doesn’t matter,” one iTunes customer wrote. “I am supporting her bravery on Grammy night for standing for what she believes, whether others agree or not.”
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