The Grammy Awards have always had an effect on record sales. But in the digital age that effect is felt more quickly than ever, since fans’ impulse buys made during the show on Sunday night register as part of the tail end of Nielsen SoundScan’s sales week.
By one measure, the show’s biggest early beneficiary was a group that didn’t win any awards at all: Mumford & Sons, the young British folk-rock band that performed on its own and with Bob Dylan, lost in the two categories it was nominated (including best new artist), but nearly doubled sales of its album “Sigh No More” (Glassnote), reaching No. 2 on the Billboard chart with 49,000.
Sales of Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs” (Merge), which took album of the year — at about 11:30 p.m. Eastern time on the live broadcast — had almost as high a weekly percentage gain, going up 95 percent to 12,000, but that number took the album only to No. 52 on the chart. Justin Bieber, Muse, Lady Antebellum and Eminem also had significant gains, for both albums and digital singles. The full effect of the “Grammy lift,” as it is known to the music industry’s data wonks, will become clear next week.
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