When it comes to buying power in the UK record industry, where perceived wisdom may suggest it is 18 to 30 males, it is actually women in their 20s and 30s that are the most important demographic and, excuse me if this sounds sexist, apparently online buying and supermarkets selling cds have now made this ever more a factor. Hey don’t shoot the messenger!
A quick peruse of the best selling lists backs this up. Look at the startling rise this year of The Ting Ting’s. You don’t imagine many blokes walking around with their iPod blasting ‘My name is Sadie!’ into their cranium.
Still need convincing? Do you know what the best selling UK album is (so far) this decade? And what is the second? Apparently the first is Dido’s ‘No Angel’ with over 12 million copies sold and the second is James Blunt’s ‘Back to Bedlam’ with around 11 million. Go back a decade and, unless I am misinformed, the best selling album of the 90s by a UK artist was Simply Red and ‘Stars’.
Regardless of your opinion of these albums, no-one would disagree that they are more likely to be found in a woman’s collection than a man’s, but if you look at the bigger picture it marks a shift at a more profound level. After all two decades isn’t a fad. Now for albums to achieve huge sales, the greatest market share lies in its potential to appeal to 20/30 something females - and you bet your ass that record companies know it.
Not so long ago who would have predicted the re-emergence of Take That and fall from grace that ‘Rudebox’ precipitated for Robbie Williams. Rob followed his muse and his album sales suffered, meanwhile Take That returned with a classy but accessible pop record aimed squarely at their former fans who, coincidentally, tend to inhabit that lucrative 20/30 female demographic. It would be naïve in the extreme to think that their record company were unaware of this. Perhaps their re-found success isn’t so surprising after all.
It makes you look at a certain girl group’s short but lucrative reformation through more cynical eyes. Geri Halliwell said in June that ‘it was the right time’ to reform. You bet it is Geri. Girl Power has become a prophecy in a way that no-one envisaged back in the days of ‘Wannabe’.
Posted In Features, Sep 03 2008.