Acts see album sales soar after Live 8 gigs
LONDON (Reuters) – They came out of charity. They left with booming record sales.
The galaxy of rock stars who took part in Live 8 concerts on Saturday to help beat the curse of poverty have seen their records fly off the shelves in British music stores, proving that cash balances as well as consciences were the winner.
According to HMV, one of Britain’s main record retailers with 200 stores nationwide, Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” album posted a staggering 1,343 percent increase in sales on Sunday compared with the same day a week ago.
The band re-formed for the Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park, where they joined pop legends Paul McCartney, Madonna, U2 and Elton John among others in front of 200,000 people.
“Even allowing for the relative nature of this exercise … this snapshot still shows that the Live 8 concert is having a marked effect on sales of featured artist recordings,” said Gennaro Castaldo spokesman for the HMV chain.
He stressed that the increase for Pink Floyd and other acts appearing in Hyde Park was partly due to the small number of records sold on Sunday, June 26. Total sales of the album on Sunday, July 3, the day after Live 8, were approaching 1,000.
Next came The Who’s “Then & Now,” with an increase of 863 percent, Annie Lennox’s “Eurythmics Greatest Hits” (500 percent) and Dido’s “Life For Rent” (412 percent).
Ironically, Coldplay’s “X&Y,” which has stormed the charts in Britain and the United States, registered one of the smallest increases out of the London Live 8 acts at just three percent.
But according to HMV, the band still sold the highest number of copies at more than 2,800.
The only Live 8 performer to have clocked a drop in sales was Pete Doherty. His former group the Libertines saw sales of their “Up the Bracket” album drop by 35 percent.
Doherty’s performance was singled out by the British media as one of the worst of the nine-hour Hyde Park music marathon.
The Mirror tabloid called his duet with Elton John “shambolic.”
Reporters at the gig said he struggled with the words of the classic song “Children of the Revolution” and looked unsteady on his feet.
Virgin Megastores, another major British music outline, could not immediately be reached for comment on post-Live 8 sales.
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