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Arctic Monkeys crash charts with second album
• Internet downloads boost sales of second album
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By
The Minx, Entertainment editor
Monday,
30 April, 2007
The Arctic Monkeys broke new records on 29 April when 18 of the group’s songs made it into the UK Charts. The Top 200 included all 12 songs from the group’s new album “Favourite Worst Nightmare”. This makes it the first time an entire album has charted. The highest placed track was Brainstorm which fell from number 2 last week to number 7.
This follows changes to the UK Music Charts in January 2007 to make downloads only (independent of physical singles) made eligible for inclusion. The Sheffield "scallies'" “Favourite Worst Nightmare” topped the CD chart last week, selling 85,000 copies on its first day in the shops last monday, more than the rest of the top 20 albums combined. The release of the second album also reinvigorated sales of the group’s first album, which was the biggest selling UK debut album of all time and pushed tracks from that too into the charts too.
Traditional singles sales dropped from around 80m a year in the late 1990s to 20 million in 2005. On the other hand there were 26m downloads in 2006 and by the end of the year, downloads made up 80% of the singles market and 52% of the top 40s singles charts.
With increased competition even rising bands can find themselves shown the door as happened to The Crimea whose first album Tragedy Rocks sold 35,000 and had a top 40 single hit, but were dropped by Warner Music last year. The band is using the internet to give away all of its second album Secrets of the Witching Hour, on the internet on May 13 in a bid to enlarge their fan base and help them generate an increased income from touring and merchandising on the back of it.
Wityh some big names complaining in the last year they they get smaller royalites on downloads than on CDs, we can expect many artists and bands to study their contracts carefully in future.
OnTheLam 2007
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