Coming out of discussion elsewhere on this forum (related to Ne-Yo having all of his hits pre-streaming), which artists have we "lost" since the rise of streaming and more significantly, which artists' declines in popularity can we attribute to the rise in streaming?

 

Are there any artists that were popular in the download era but have failed to set alight the streaming market?

 

DISCUSS~

I think if she doesn’t count for this yet then she soon will, but definitely Pink. She does not stream well and she’s quite a way into her career now so this is leading to a fade in her relevancy. She’s fought it well so far but I feel her next era will be her biggest underperformance.

Lily Allen - she used to be able to get hits so easily but her latest album did nothing, although that might be due to a messy release strategy potentially.

 

Ellie Goulding - Same as above really

I think if we look at some of the pre-00s ladies of pop (Kylie, Madonna, Britney, Xtina, etc) they’ve really suffered with their singles chart positions because of streaming. They were all quite strong during the download era.

Cheryl immediately strikes me as one - perhaps partly down to almost abandoning her music career for a few years after Crazy Stupid Love and I Don't Care so she completely missed the chance to properly establish herself in the streaming era before Love Made Me Do It.

 

Fanbase acts in general too - there's the likes of 1D and Little Mix who caught on with the streaming audience but The Vamps and 5SOS less so. Both have had streaming hits (notably All Night and Youngblood respectively) but they're both somewhat anomalies in their chart histories over the past few years, particularly for The Vamps.

Anyone who doesn't get added to the company-curated playlists

Kylie Minogue springs to mind instantly. Still capable of getting Top 10 hits at the start of the 2010s ('All The Lovers' reaching #3 in 2010), her last Top 40 hit was 'Into The Blue' which made #12 in 2014, the same year that streaming was introduced to the charts. Madonna is another artist with a career spanning decades who achieved #1 singles in the download era but has been non-existent on the charts in the streaming era.

 

 

Lots of the 'UK only' acts crop up to me. Presumably as they don't feature high enough on the playlists which are more US-centric and the most popular.

 

Cheryl, Katy B, Tinie Tempah and Olly Murs off the top of my head.

Olly Murs is the ultimate one I feel.

Jessie J is another, pretty much no charting success since streaming became the dominant format despite been pretty huge in the early 2010s.

Olly Murs is the ultimate one I feel.

 

He's funnily had an anomaly in 'You Don't Know Love' which sold decently and had longevity but a disappointing peak in comparison to what he would've got with a held back release.

Most artist ls ignored by radio and not put on the popular playlists!

Lots of the 'UK only' acts crop up to me. Presumably as they don't feature high enough on the playlists which are more US-centric and the most popular.

 

Cheryl, Katy B, Tinie Tempah and Olly Murs off the top of my head.

 

Add Pixie Lott & Lily Allen to that list as well.

I think if she doesn’t count for this yet then she soon will, but definitely Pink. She does not stream well and she’s quite a way into her career now so this is leading to a fade in her relevancy. She’s fought it well so far but I feel her next era will be her biggest underperformance.

An underperformance bigger than H2BH's? Dang.

An underperformance bigger than H2BH's? Dang.

 

Yes probably. Although on reflection, Hurts 2B Human didn’t do too badly in the UK if you consider the climate. Chromatica, for example, is hailed as a success but still hasn’t matched H2BH’s sales in the UK.

 

What I mean is that I don’t even think Pink will manage to get a top 10 lead single next time though she may still get a high charting album.

Add Pixie Lott & Lily Allen to that list as well.

they were already on the way out before streaming took off as the dominant consumption method.

 

Lily of course had the exception of SOWK but that was more so due to John Lewis ads songs being at their peak in public interest.

Ex-Band Members, I feel Go To Work by Nadine and Back To You by Mollie King both could have troubled the lower end of Top 10 / high Top 20 with a traditional held-back release proceeded by promotion and a CD single release too.

 

But the instant release of the streaming era didn’t offer that - although I’ll stand by that Back To You could have been a mild hit after its Top 100 debut, but her management clearly hadn’t transitioned from the sales to streaming era of The Saturdays, and abandoned the campaign after week one.

the one that saddens me the most is Madonna, how she cannot even go top 40 with the album lead single, sad to see :/

Yes probably. Although on reflection, Hurts 2B Human didn’t do too badly in the UK if you consider the climate. Chromatica, for example, is hailed as a success but still hasn’t matched H2BH’s sales in the UK.

 

What I mean is that I don’t even think Pink will manage to get a top 10 lead single next time though she may still get a high charting album.

Albums that sold over 100k units:

2019: 51 albums

2020: 38 albums

 

Albums that sold over 200k units:

2019: 13 albums

2020: 7 albums

 

Albums that went Platinum (300k):

2019: 6 albums

2020: 1 album

 

Albums that sold over 500k:

2019: 3 albums

2020: 0 albums

 

Ironic that you use the sales climate argument when that argument is literally in favor of Chromatica and not H2BH. Did you forget that Chromatica was released literally in the middle of a pandemic? Make some sense.

I feel like the likes of Kylie and Madonna started to struggle around the turn of the 2010s when CD singles became less readily available in shops (and when Radio 1 stopped playlisting them)