How streaming helped Kylie score multi-chart milestones this week
A marketing focus on portraying Kylie Minogue as a streaming performer has helped her new Disco album score multi-chart milestones in Australia and the UK.
It debuted at #1 on the ARIA albums and vinyl charts, marking her seventh chart-topping album, and follows her third in as many years, following Golden in 2018 and Step Back In Time in 2019.
It cements her status as Australia’s highest-selling female artist, holding the record for the most ARIA #1 albums by an Australian female artist, and 80 million albums sold worldwide.
“Kylie signed to Mushroom when she was 18 and I couldn’t be prouder to be part of her continuing success,” Mushroom Group chairman Michael Gudinski said.
“It is a testament to what an incredible artist Kylie is. “Her passion and work ethic to make this album through COVID shows her commitment.
“As Kylie herself told me, ‘it’s hard yakka but I’m so committed to this, and I miss Australia’.”
The same sentiments seem to apply in the UK where Disco beat Little Mix’s Confetti to the summit in a close race, and where she achieved a number of chart milestones.
It had the best opening week of any new release in 2020 so far, with 55,000 units from streaming, downloads, CDs, vinyl and even one cassette release.
It was Minogue’s biggest opening week there in 10 years, since 2010’s Aphrodite.
Disco is her 8th UK chart-topper, seeing her overtake Elton John, Cliff Richard and George Michael in the all-time stakes.
The singer has become the first woman to top the UK album chart across five decades.
The Official Charts Company revealed her chart-topping run began with her debut Kylie in 1988.
It was followed by Enjoy Yourself (1989), Greatest Hits (1992), Fever (2001), Aphrodite (2010), Golden (2018), Step Back In Time: The Definitive Collection (2019) and now Disco (2020).
Only four other acts have topped the chart across five consecutive decades: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Paul Weller and David Gilmour.
The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan also went to #1 across five decades, but not consecutively.
“Over the last three years BMG has been on a journey with Kylie which has culminated in her third #1 album with us in consecutive years,” Alistair Norbury said, BMG’s UK president.
“Kylie has singlehandedly lifted the lockdown gloom!”
With the release, BMG adapted its marketing to reach a wider audience through streaming.
With disco returning in the midst of the pandemic gloom with Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, and unable to transfer the album’s dancefloor exuberance live by going on tour, BMG move to turn physical format-heavy Minogue into a streaming artist was through online campaigns and multi- remixes.
Music Week reported that the singles ‘Say Something’ generated 7.1 million Spotify streams (also her biggest airplay hit since ‘Get Outta My Way’) and follow up ‘Magic’ has already hit one million.
Since Golden, her cumulative streams are up 183%, with a 101% growth in Spotify followers to over 1.1 million. But Minogue admitted that she was still awkward when it came to streaming.
“I know BMG is really making an effort to get more streaming for me but my audience is probably a bit like me, with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new world.
“So I’m doing as best as I can to move with the times. But if someone asks me to explain how it all works, I’d have to just get the cheque and leave the room!
“Once you get into algorithms… I’ll just sing the song, how about that?”