We’ve written regularly recently about the trend of musicians finding big audiences within Twitter’s Vine app, then translating that popularity to music sales on Apple’s iTunes store. The latest is Shawn Mendes, who released his first EP at the weekend, and saw it soar to the top of the iTunes album chart within 37 minutes of its release, fuelled by his fans on Twitter. As we reported earlier in the year, Mendes isn’t self-releasing his music: he signed a deal with Island Records in June (Bulletin, 5-Jun-14). “Our reason for getting involved with Shawn is not specifically because of his following online,” said Island president David Massey at the time. “It’s great when an artist has a platform, but I think we would have signed Shawn if we just discovered him a different way.” Mendes went on to sell nearly 200k copies of his debut single later that month (Bulletin, 30-Jun-14). Now, Massey says the following EP’s success sends out a bigger message: “There hasn’t been any genuine, big record sales coming from Vine or anything like that, so it was nice to see his followers, who love him so much, really support him and go out and buy his record.”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…