With closed borders, no live shows and less new releases, the future of the music industry looks rather bleak during the corona crisis… How could we see that reflected in the Music Moves Europe Talent artist chart?
As this is a cumulative chart, every week the artists amass points for the monthly artist chart. So during March the 100 artists in this chart combined collected 3% more total audience impressions (streaming and radio airplay combined) than the month before. But in April the 100 artists combined collected less than 1% more points than in March. A rather radical decline…
For completists, this is a little more difficult sum to calculate then it looks at first sight, as some of the artists drop out of the chart due to the fact they amass more than 1 billion audience impressions or they complete the three-year eligible period. So for example, this month we said goodbye to Irish rockers Fontaines D.C. and British singer-songwriter Freya Ridings among others because their first releases were more than three years ago.
In difficult times, uplifting tunes might bring an upbeat mood. So, again mostly the poppy tunes do rather well this month. Acts that improved ten or more notches this month are German dance-pop singer Kim Petras at #32, Swedish pop singer Victor Leksell at #38, Austrian pop chanteuse Mathea at #43, British indie act Number at #59, British soul-pop singer Arlo Parks at #70, Italian indie-pop singer Julia Bardo at #76, British indie-pop singer Alfie Templeman at #80 and British dance producer Franky Wah at #87.
In a crisis, never waste a good opportunity. So no less than seven new entries appear in the lower regions this month. Highest of those is British pop singer Millie Turner at #81. Thus far she only scored some streaming impact, but now her new single Jungle (AWAL) reaches radio in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. At #90, British dance production duo Handsome Habibi enters thanks to Polish airplay for their Waste My Time (Sony). And EOB at #91 stands for Ed O’Brien, the guitarist of the British band Radiohead. Several album tracks of his solo album Earth (Universal) fare rather well in Eastern Europe.
Swing is the name of a new rapper from Brussels, entering at #97. French-speaking countries are fond of his collaboration with Belgian star Angèle on S’En Aller (PIAS). British band Audiobooks has a sleeper hit for almost half a year in Poland with Dance Your Life Away (PIAS), enough to enter at #98. And Anna, in at #99, is a 16-year old from Milan, who has success on video-sharing platform TikTok with Bando (Universal) and crosses over now to neighbouring countries. Finally, we can welcome an artist from Slovenia: rapper Senidah. She collaborated with Berlin-based rapper RAF Camora on 100% (Bassivity) and now she can be heard in German-speaking countries as well.
Menno Visser
Music journalist and radio professional from The Netherlands
