Remember the days (i.e. 2014) when record labels signing Vine stars was news? Then the days (i.e. still 2014) when those Vine stars topping the iTunes charts was news? In 2015, the news is about them topping the real album charts. Billboard claims that Viner Shawn Mendes is likely to do more than 100,000 equivalent album units this week to take top spot in its albums chart with his debut LP ‘Handwritten’.
It hasn’t provided more details on how that breaks down between sales and streams, but given that Mendes was one of the iTunes-topping artists last year, it’s fair to speculate that sales WILL still be an important element in his success now. Mendes signed a deal with Island Records in June 2014 (Bulletin, 5-Jun-14) when he was the third most-followed musician on Vine, going on to sell nearly 200,000 copies of his first single for the label in its first week (Bulletin, 30-Jun-14). To have that translate into a successful album is a coup for the label – and a sign of the wider commercial clout of Mendes and other Vine-originated stars.
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In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…