Spotify Streams Soar After The Grammys

It used to be that an appearance on the Grammy's was a sure way to sell big loads of vinyl or CDs the following week. That's no longer the case, since large amounts of streams have taken the place of sales. Spotify provided some early numbers for those who appeared on the show on Sunday night.

• Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" up 205% (estimated at over 300,000 streams)
• Chicago's "Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is" up 150%
• Metallica's "One" up more than 125%
• Beyonce's "Drunk Love" up 52%

But in many cases, an artist's entire catalog actually got a boost from the Grammy exposure.

• Paul McCartney's catalog up 126%
• Kendrick Lamar catalog up 100%
• Macklemore & Ryan Lewis up 65%
• Taylor Swift catalog up 65%
• Lorde's up 46%

But perhaps the biggest winner of the evening is one of our greatest musical icons. Stevie Wonder's "Another Star" was up a whopping 635% as of Tuesday.

I'd say these numbers prove that streaming is here to stay (like we needed any proof already).

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Just What The World Needs: An EDM Award Show

As if we don't have enough awards shows already, electronic dance music will soon be getting one of their own. The yet unnamed awards show will be produced by festival promotoer Insomniac and Dick Clark Productions and will be held in Las Vegas during Electric Daisy Carnival week next summer.

The show is apparently a backlash to the Grammy's nominating little known DJ Al Walser last year in the "Best Dance Single" category. Walser managed to game the system with a social media and email campaign directed at Grammy voters, and it worked, despite the fact that no one had heard of him before. It also revealed the lack of sophistication in EDM by the Grammy voters, which helped bring about the EDM industry's own set of awards.

This is a natural for Dick Clark Production, already a veteran of awards shows producing the Golden Globes and American Music Awards, but it also begs the question "Do we need another awards show?", especially one on television. These shows are already plenty boring, thanks to lots of lip synching, canned music, and productions designed to upstage the thing the shows are celebrating - the music. I can't image it can be much better with live or canned performances by DJs, who tend to come off even worse than musical artists on television.

This is another sign that EDM is going mainstream, of course, which is good for making money but bad for the creativity. The clock is now officially ticking until the world moves on to the next trend.

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The Grammy Bounce

It seems that this year's Grammy Awards show was the most successful ever in many people's minds (although viewing was down more than 20%), thanks in part to a big social media push on Twitter. Host LL Cool J leaned on the show's hashtags and handle quite a bit, and it seems to have paid off handsomely. The Recording Academy was smart enough to constantly tweet and post behind-the-scenes info during the show, and LL Cool J frequently quoted tweets during the show that indicated that they were listening.

What's more, the Grammy bounce (increased sales after an appearance on the show) seems to have really taken effect this year, after many years of very modest performance. Here's a look at how both songs and artists fared after the Grammys, thanks to 7digital, which powers music on a host of smart phones and tablets.

Songs:

• "I Will Wait" -- Mumford & Sons +394 percent
• "Lonely Boy" -- The Black Keys +367 percent
• "Could You Be Loved" -- Bob Marley & The Wailers +367 percent
• "Adorn" -- Miguel +353 percent
• "Blown Away" -- Carrie Underwood +195 percent
• "Ho Hey" -- The Lumineers +166 percent
• "The A Team" -- Ed Sheeran +133 percent
• "Over You" -- Miranda Lambert +133 percent
• "Home" -- Dierks Bentley +133 percent
• "Daylight" -- Maroon 5 +133 percent
• "Suit & Tie" -- Justin Timberlake featuring JAY-Z +119 percent
• "Carry On" -- Fun. +91 percent

Artists

• Dierks Bentley +294 percent
• Elton John +282 percent
• Carrie Underwood +194 percent
• Ed Sheeran +192 percent
• The Lumineers +170 percent
• Mumford & Sons +158 percent
• Frank Ocean +104 percent
• Kelly Clarkson +71 percent
• Fun. +56 percent
• Wiz Khalifa +48 percent
• Bob Marley +35 percent

We'll take a look at how these acts far with their overall sales in a couple of days.

I've been a critic of the Grammys for a while, but I have to say that I thought this year's show was great. For the most part, it had terrific energy and seemed to answer some of the criticisms that it garnered in recent years (like the forced artist collaborations). Way to go Recording Academy!

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Bon Iver Turns Down Grammy's

Here's something that hardly ever happens - an artist turns down an offer to perform on the Grammys television awards show. That's what Bon Iver just did, even though they were nominated and the exposure would probably lead to a big uptick in sales.

The reason for their decline to perform was the Grammy show's current policy for musical mashups. While on the surface this may seem an exciting idea, in reality it always seems a bit insincere. It's cool when acts collaborate when they truly dig each other, but when they're forced for the sake of a television show, it dilutes the impact of all the acts involved. Most of us would rather see the acts perform their own material, for better or worse.

Bon Iver's lead singer Justin Vernon told Billboard, "We wanted to play our music, but were told that we couldn't play [it]. We had to do a collaboration with someone else, and we just felt like it was such a large stage, we're getting nominated for this record that we made, .... and all of a sudden we were asked to play music that had nothing to do with that."

There are a lot of things wrong with the Grammy's (don't get me started), and this is one of them. The entire organization now revolves around the show and its ratings, instead of the science and art of making better music. It would be totally refreshing if the organization returned to that mission, but I'm not expecting it in my lifetime.

More on the Grammys in days to come.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.