Why wasn’t Jacko number 1?

Matthew — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:01:16 +0000

Michael Jackson did not reach number one in the charts yesterday, or last week. It feels significant in a world in which the winner of X Factor can assume a Christmas number 1 spot.

In the week and a bit since his death, there has been the largest amount of coverage that any popstar has received since iTunes was invented, but it hasn’t propelled him to top spot.Why?

1. The long tail

It might be that Jackson failed to get to number 1 because of the long tail. Man in the Mirror got to number 2, one of 8 Jackson records to get into the top 40. The lack of consensus around what his best song was, may show an artist with a dazzling array of hits and perhaps it was the availability of all of his back catalgoue which helped keep him away from number 1.

2. Exhausted market

Perhaps those that download singles just aren’t interested in Michael Jackson. Perhaps some second-rate club anthem is genuinely preferrable to many of the young people who download singles. Maybe they’d already got MJ songs on their ipods after taking them from their parents’ album collections. Maybe, after having sold 40m records, anyone who was ever likely to buy an MJ album already had. Except, that doesn’t account for his album The Essential, taking top spot.

3. Changing demographics

Connected to this is the changing demographics of ‘record buying’. Perhaps that means that Michael Jackson doesn’t resonate with new audiences. That may account for the lack of his greatest hits appearing on requests shows at most points in the last ten years.

4. Irrelevance of mass media

If there is some truth in 3. then it’s possible that the MJ story shows the decline of mass media in influencing the narket. Maybe cover to cover reporting in national newspapers doesn’t make a difference when it comes to influencing the teenagers who download music. Being a trending topic on Twitter for all those old enough to be stuck by a desk with nothing more attractive to do than interact on Twitter is not an effective way of reaching this audience. Perhaps Sky News and the rest just don’t reach young audiences in the same way.

5. Media hype?

Lots of journalists have worried that the media has over-reported Michael Jackson’s death – see Roy Greenslade today. However, the general response that they have received has tended to be ‘no, this is a massive story’. But did these people go and buy his records as a result?

6.No concentrated marketing

Martin Belam suggests “#6 No concentrated marketing around a single track from his label. Previously when we’ve seen the like of Elvis or John Lennon die, their record company would flood shops with stocks of *one* 7″ single, and if you wanted to go to a shop to pay your tribute, you pretty much only had the *one* in stock 7″ to choose from. If Sony had made all of Jackson’s digital catalogue ‘album only’ except for one or two individual single tracks, I think they would have made the push for #1 easily.”

Which is true, of course. And perhaps it’s a good thing for the record company that it didn’t (or didn’t get around to it) because this way it sold more downloads in total. But in that case, it shows the declinig marketing benefit of getting a #1 hit single.

It’s also a tribute to the quality of Jackson’s back-catalogue. In fact, I think Elton John is one of the few other artists where it would be really hard to identify his ‘best ever’ single.

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Why wasn’t Jacko number 1?