2010 CHART REWIND. Music Week and Nielsen Music recently presented stats on what songs got most airplay on UK radio last year. WelcheMusic first wrote about “California Gurls” back in July last year. Katy Perry collaborated with Snoop Dogg on the track, which topped the airplay chart for five weeks. It took a while to get there, Perry first entered the chart at No.119 and took eight weeks to reach the top. In total, “California Gurls” racked up 69,592 plays across the UK and won over Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro.” The latter has two singles inside the year-end top ten as “Bad Romance” was No.4.
2010 CHART REWIND.The Beatles had a great 2010, with sales passing 2m further to the availability on iTunes. WelcheMusic has recently covered this story, and would like to add that experts say that the launch was entirely driven by social media.
According to SearchEngineLand, many claim that search beats social media when it comes to product discovery, those rules don’t apply to The Beatles. The launch resulted in more than two million individual songs sold worldwide and 450,000 albums in the first week on Apple’s iTunes Music Store. The catalog was available from November 16th 2010.
Industry analyst Experian Hitwise has provided the stats below, showing how online traffic surrounding The Beatles on iTunes. Upon the release on iTunes (16/11), UK traffic to Apple.com came from social media, about double the amount that came from search.
Another important source was Facebook, which resulted in a “huge spike” in UK Traffic to the Apple site. It jumped from 86-20 on the most popular outbound destinations from Facebook.
2010 CHART REWIND. We’re definitely sure that Taio Cruz doesn’t look back on 2010 in anger. Few UK artists have earned such great success in the US as Cruz. His hit single “Break Your Heart” topped both the UK and US singles charts, while “Dynamite” reached No.2 Stateside while topping the tallies in the UK, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.
As Swedes, WelcheMusic is particularly pleased about “Dynamite” being co-written by pop genius Max Martin. Another interesting note is that “Break Your Heart” was written for Cheryl Cole.
So, what is waiting in the wings for Cruz in 2011? In February his next single “Higher” will be released in the UK. The track has already charted internationally, peaking at No.10 in Austria, No.7 in Germany and No.5 in Switzerland. The track was co-written by Taio Cruz and the French song-writer Sandy Vee and has actually been released in four different versions.
Most territories will chant to Kylie Minogue, while Travie McCoy (of “Millionaire” fame) was chosen for the US market – the track has yet reached No.41. A third version is available with vocals from the local girl band K3, while a fourth is a solo version.
“Higher” follows the recent hit single “Shine a Light” which was released last November as a collaboration with British boy band McFly. The track peaked at No.4 in the UK, charting in France, Portugal and Scotland as well. It was McFly’s 15th top ten hit in the UK.
2010 CHART REWIND.It all looked very promising as WelcheMusic cheered The Wanted’s chart career. “All Time Low” crushed all competition and landed the No.1 spot in a beat, while “Heart Vacancy” bowed at No.2. The UK welcomed the latest boy band with open arms. Something happened, however, when the third single was released. Despite performing their last hit single “Lose My Mind” on The X Factor, the song entered at No.29 – an all time low for the band. This week it moves 29-19. In Ireland, the single peaked at No.43.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv2CDjyPRkg
WelcheMusic is still impressed with the lineup of producers for this track. Rami’sdiscography includes Backstreet Boys’ “Shape of My Heart,” Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time” and *NSync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me.” Carl Falk has worked with Glee’s Matthew Morrison and Westlife while The Wideboys remixed tracks for Enrique Iglesias, Cheryl Cole and Katy Perry.
WelcheMusic still thinks that The Wanted makes excellent poppy tunes and knows that there are plenty of tracks off the debut album deserving to become pop singles.