BRIT Awards – Emile Sande, Ben Howard see social media surge, Muse get little

New figures reveal that Brit Winners saw a significant rise in new social media fans following her win and performance at the BRIT Awards ceremony.

Emeli Sand, who picked up the awards for Best British Female and Best British Album, saw a 60% increase in the number of people choosing to follow her on Twitter.

According to figures released by Musicmetric, the global music analysts, in the 24 hours following the Brits Sande the number of people following Sande on social media increased by 100% to 20,000, compared with 10,000 in the 24 hours leading up to the awards ceremony. Her Twitter growth was the most notable with nearly 15,000 new followers compared to almost 9,000 the day before.

Sande wasn’t the only big winner at last night’s star-studded ceremony; relative newcomer Ben Howard who took home the prizes for Best Male Solo Artist and Breakthrough Artist saw a massive spike in his new social media fans with an almost 250% increase on the previous day. The singer saw the most substantial leap in his new Facebook fans jumping to nearly 4000 in the last 24 hours compared to 600 the previous day.

Growing popularity on social media was also reflected in the iTunes charts. Emeli Sande, Grammy winners Mumford & Sons and Brit nominee Jake Bugg have all seen their albums enter the top ten of iTunes’ UK album chart.

Devon glam-rockers Muse, in spite their performance with a 60-piece orchestra, did not see a significant increase in fan uptake. On the day of the Brits, Muse gained 12,000 new fans on social media platforms, compared with the previous week’s peak of 15,000 new fans on the 15^th February.

Gregory Mead, chief executive of Musicmetric, said:

“Awards ceremonies – like album releases, marriages, and deaths – have a big impact the online profile of artists.

“With more and more music fans are choosing to listen to and discover music online through social media and platforms such as Spotify, it is important that music industry bosses understand this activity in order to maximise revenue.”