Performers at the Grammys see sales jump

Who benefited most from this year’s Grammy Awards telecast?

That depends on which yardstick you use, but as usual the artists who scored performance slots generally experienced bigger immediate sales gains over actual award winners. The lucky few who won and performed during the telecast were rewarded handsomely.

English pop star Ed Sheeran’s total song sales jumped more than 37,000 units, or 166 percent, following his appearance, leading the pack of musicians whose sales experienced the greatest increases, according to BuzzAngle’s post-Grammy sales report. Sheeran sold a total of 59,000 songs Feb. 12.

The sales monitoring service compared average daily sales from the six days just before the Grammys with sales numbers posted on the day of the show.

Close behind Sheeran was Bruno Mars, who was featured in the show’s tribute to Prince. His appearance spurred more than 36,000 song sales in the aftermath of the ceremony, an uptick of 294 percent over those of the days leading up to the ceremony. He sold a total of 49,000 songs on the day of the show.

Country singer-songwriter Keith Urban got a bump of 18,000 song sales, up 331 percent, followed by country newcomer Maren Morris’ 17,984 song sales (up 815 percent) and the Weeknd at 15,431 (up 117 percent).

New artist Grammy winner Chance the Rapper also presumably generated considerably increased interest in his music, but he didn’t figure into BuzzAngle’s sales figures. His debut album, “Coloring Book,” is available only as a free stream.

As for individual album sales increases, Grammy triple crown winner Adele, who took home the album, record and song awards, reaped immediate gains.

BuzzAngle reported that sales of her already-mega-selling album “25” jumped 232 percent to 2,825 copies on Grammy Sunday. It has now sold almost 10.2 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music, a competing industry service. Beyonc?’s “Lemonade” did even better on Grammy night, increasing 297 percent with 3,272 copies sold that day. Total equivalent sales for “Lemonade” now stand at 861,000 copies, Nielsen reports.

Nielsen Music’s post-Grammy figures came in along similar lines to those from BuzzAngle, with a reported 150 percent sales increase for “25” and a 308 percent jump for Adele’s single, “Hello.”

Beyonc?’s “Lemonade” scored a 267 percent increase and the “Formation” single bounced up 105 percent, based on Nielsen’s comparison to the daily averages for the Friday and Saturday preceding the ceremony.

Percentage-wise, the most eye-popping increases went to artists who were comparatively low on music fans’ radar screens before the Grammy ceremony.

Veteran R&B-soul singer and songwriter William Bell posted a whopping 23,691 percent increase in sales of his blues classic “Born Under a Bad Sign,” according to BuzzAngle. He played the song at the Grammys with guitarist and singer Gary Clark Jr., and that staggering number reflected the fact that only seven copies of the song had sold the day before the Grammy Awards, jumping to just fewer than 1,700 on the day of the show.

Likewise, Bell’s overall artist sales exploded by 5,805 percent to 1,741, and Clark’s similarly shot up 2,146 percent, to 3,180.

Americana singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson, who took home the country album Grammy for his “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” saw a 1,063 percent increase in total song sales, with 5,173 units. Sales for the song he performed, “All Around You,” jumped 10,760 percent, from 20 to 2,200 on Grammy Sunday, according to Nielsen’s figures.

Prince’s former cohorts in the Time scored BuzzAngle’s only other four-figure percentage increase with sales of 1,687 units, representing a 1,871 percent bump over average daily sales going into the show.

Ranked by unit sales behind him among the top five sellers were Mars’ “That’s What I Like” (19,339 copies, up 527 percent), Keith Urban’s “The Fighter” (14,824, up 1,180 percent), Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” (10,581, up 1,045 percent) and the Weeknd’s “I Feel It Coming” (10,093, up 213 percent).

Sales for music of the honorees in the telecast’s three tribute numbers — Prince, the Bee Gees and George Michael — all jumped, according to BuzzAngle: 338 percent for Prince, 553 percent for Michael and 640 percent for the Bee Gees.

Billboard even noted that fashion came into play.

Singer Joy Villa, who generated considerable attention with her dress emblazoned with the words “Make America Great Again” and “Trump,” sold 15,000 copies on Grammy Sunday and Monday, according to Nielsen, a dramatic increase from the “negligible amount” it had sold before her limelight moment walking the Staples Center red carpet.