Performances at the Billboard Music Awards on 18th May triggered 1.58m download sales, the organisers claim. They looked at the sales of the 20 tracks performed at the show in the week after the awards – 18 of which were available before and two were released soon after the awards. There was a bit of tweaking of the methodology to try and understand the impact. “Because the BBMAs occurred on a Sunday, the final day of SoundScan’s tracking week, the show’s impact is distributed in two separate weeks,” says Billboard. “Thus, to get the full picture, one should examine the two weeks ending May 18 and May 25, as compared to the two weeks previous (May 4 and May 11).” Some of the biggest beneficiaries were Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy’, Jason Derulo’s ‘Wiggle’, Katy Perry’s ‘Birthday’ and Lorde’s ‘Tennis Court’. Of course, this does not factor in the natural sales of the tracks anyway, especially those that were currently being marketed elsewhere such as on radio, but it does show that for mainstream acts, traditional media (TV) and new sales channels (downloading) remain tightly intertwined. What would have been more interesting – and offering a more complete picture of where consumers go to listen when triggered to – is looking at the spikes across subscription streaming services but also YouTube (for clips of the performances themselves but also the official videos).
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