How the digital download revolution has rocketed the TV show to the charts
Glee. It’s the new TV sensation to grace our shores. For fans of High School Musical who can’t get enough of the three motion-picture installments, Glee might just be their saving grace. Earlier this month five hits in the UK Top 75 the week after the show's debut, thanks to the clever marketing strategy of the show’s producers and the rise of the download singles chart.
This hit US show is part comedy, part musical, part parody (full grown men singing 90’s throwback Color Me Badd acapella style is cringe inducing but strangely good). For those of you who haven’t seen it, it features the lives of a group of colourful student misfit stereotypes (the beautiful geek girl, the flamboyant rich gay boy…etc) trying to make it in the Glee club – the musical theatre group that makes the cheerleaders and footballers recoil in horror. It’s a pretty standard American high-school formula, but it’s dry humour, quick wit and humorous songs are getting people hooked.
Over in the States, the week ending Oct 18, the "Glee" version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ had sold 522,000 downloads. In the week following its TV debut, it sold 177,000 downloads and entered the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 4 -higher than the original version ever charted. Evidently, digital track sales are proving to be a big money maker for US TV networks like Fox and Columbia and a new model for how the music industry can generate cash from TV shows.
Several TV shows move music fans to buy songs they hear, but "Glee" gets them to buy new versions by the program's cast. Columbia sells the recordings on iTunes, and the label has had a striking amount of success. Collectively, 20 titles by the "Glee" cast have sold 1.8 million digital tracks. In the UK, tracks are advertised and released immediately after the screening of the week’s installment, a lucrative marketing policy if there ever was one…
But without the changing laws of the UK’s singles chart permitting downloads to enter the Top 75, would the popularity of “Glee”’s cheerful renditions be as popular? A close friend of mine browses the net whilst sat in front of the TV, checking out gossip and info about her favourite stars, and hunting for the latest spoilers and random facts. We are now living in a multitask culture, where people consume multiple medias at once and act on impulse to consume as much of the latest trends as possible in whatever format they can be grasped. The rise of iTunes with its ability to instantly recommend the newest cult trends and serve our latest musical fancy is a key reason for the chart-storming prowess of the Glee kids, the X Factor finalists and random 80s power ballads.
What will be the next interactive phenomena to grace our eyes and ears in the months to come?
What do you think?