Sales of James Blake's 'Overgrown' increase by 2,500 percent following Mercury Prize win

November 1, 2013 16:06

Fellow nominees David Bowie, Savages and Villagers also album boost sales

James Blake has seen sales of his album 'Overgrown' rise by more than 2,500 percent following his Mercury Prize win on Wednesday night (October 30).

The album, Blake's second, was picked above competition from Arctic Monkeys, Disclosure, Villagers, Rudimental, David Bowie and the bookies' favourite Laura Mvula at the London ceremony. Upon winning the award, the 22nd Mercury Prize, delivered a short speech on the night, and said: "Thank you to my parents for showing me the importance of being independent."

Sales of 'Overgrown' on Amazon have jumped 2,538 per cent on Amazon.co.uk following Blake's victory. Meanwhile, other artists nominated for the annual prize have also seen sales boosts with Savages earning the next biggest uplift with sales of their album 'Silence Yourself' increasing by 278 per cent. Elsewhere, David Bowie (229 per cent) and Villager (215 per cent) and Laura Mvula (165 per cent) were also beneficiaries of the award and its high media coverage.

Other nominated albums including Disclosure’s 'Settle', Jon Hopkins' 'Immunity' and Laura Marling's 'Once I Was an Eagle' all sold over 100 per cent more copies following Wednesday night's ceremony.

James Blake follows in the footsteps of Primal Scream, PJ Harvey, Badly Drawn Boy, Elbow, Ms Dynamite, Roni Size, Antony & The Johnsons, Speech Debelle and Alt-J, who have all won the prize. The ceremony, presented by BBC 6 Music's Lauren Laverne, was held at London's Roundhouse.

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Roughly 60 Percent of All Daft Punk Album Sales Came from iTunes...

It was streaming on iTunes before it was streaming on Spotify.  And part of the reason is that iTunes was collecting paid album download pre-orders, and selling a ton of them.

According to stats now being shared with Digital Music News, iTunes accounted for roughly 60 percent of all first-week sales of Daft Punk's latest, Random Access Memories.  Overall, first-week sales topped 337,000 units in the US alone, according to stats published by Nielsen Soundscan.

But that's just the top level.  Subsequent information from label executives tied to the project reveal that overall album downloads topped 221,000 units.  That's an aggregated figure that also includes Amazon MP3 and the Daft Punk site, though one executive assured us that iTunes 'easily' pulled more than 90 percent of those sales.

Surprisingly, CDs accounted for nearly 100,000 of the sales, with vinyl a modest 5-6 percent, according to the top-level data shared.

Apple doesn't disclose exact sales data, but does share the information back with labels.  According to a report issued several months ago by NPD Group, iTunes now accounts for 63 percent of all digital music downloads.

So what's next?  Daft Punk broke streaming records on Spotify, but that only pays so much.  The broader question is whether other artists will now follow Daft Punk's lead with pre-release, streaming exclusives on iTunes (with pre-orders prominently placed).  And, greater windowing on streaming services to maximize first-week sales.    

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