Debut albums contribute to sales surge

Debut albums contribute to sales surge

Source: Music Week

Polydor’s James Morrison has achieved the highest opening tally by a newly-arrived UK act during the month of August since Craig David’s Born To Do It nearly six years ago.

In any other year such a fantastic start for a debuting artist might have attracted a few more fireworks, but it has become somewhat par for the course in 2006 with Morrison becoming the eighth act so far this year to head the UK albums chart with their first album. With the list also taking in Arctic Monkeys, Corinne Bailey Rae, Gnarls Barkley, Journey South, Shayne Ward, Orson and Sandi Thom, 2006 comfortably boasts the highest number of debut album number ones up to this point in a year in more than a decade.

RCA managing director Craig Logan, who in Journey South, Thom and Ward can lay claim to three of the year’s chart-topping debuts, says it is an exciting time to be bringing a new artist to market. “I don’t think it’s any easier to break a debut artist but I would say that there are different platforms now,†he says. “There are more opportunities to break acts through different mediums than before.â€

Over the past three years the UK charts have seen a steady increase in debut acts reaching the ultimate chart position with their first album. While three debut artists hit the top spot up to the end of August 2000, just two achieved the result over the same timeframe in 2001, falling to one in 2002. Since then, however, there have been six artists debut at number one during the first eight months of 2003, four in 2004 and five in 2005.

The breakthrough success of artists such as Arctic Monkeys, and more recently Lily Allen – both of whom built the foundations of their careers outside of the walls of the mainstream media – has allowed them to reach a wider audience far quicker than otherwise might have been the case.

Beyond even the most dedicated, tuned-in music fan, the public also appears to be hungrier than ever to discover the “next big thingâ€. “I do think there is an appetite with the public to discover new music now which means media is more prone to taking a risk,†says Polydor’s co-president Colin Barlow. “That’s the beauty of an Arctic Monkeys or Lily Allen. It is really exciting; it’s almost like the public discovered these artists first. It means media is starting to feel more comfortable in taking a bigger risk on a new act.â€

Such was the anticipation for Arctic Monkeys’ debut that, upon its release through Domino in January, it made chart history by becoming the fastest-selling first album by a UK artist to date, scanning more than 360,000 units first week.