Elbow top 10 hit confirms Mercury effect

Music
16 Sep 08

HMV have reported a major rise in sales for those albums nominated for this year's Mercury Prize, including Elbow's The Seldom Seen Kid.

Following hot on the heels of their success in winning the newly titled Nationwide Mercury Prize, Elbow have crashed back into the top ten with their album The Seldom Seen Kid, zooming from No.61 up to No.7 in the UK charts. In the process, sales of the album have increased almost seven-fold in HMV shops – a figure that is likely to be reflected across the retail spectrum.

"Following Elbow's popular Nationwide Mercury win, The Seldom Seen Kid is currently selling nearly seven times as many copies at HMV as it was before last week's ceremony," HMV's Gennaro Castaldo confirmed to hotpress.com. "That's a pretty substantial rise in such a short time, and with more sales to come over the next few weeks, the band look set to be one of the biggest ever beneficiaries of winning a Nationwide Mercury Prize, when measured in commercial terms."

Within HMV, the twelve albums nominated for this year's Nationwide Mercury Prize have enjoyed the biggest post-awards increase in the event's seventeen year history.

"Sales of the twelve albums over the past seven days at HMV have shown a near fivefold average increase (479%) since last Tuesday's awards ceremony (September 9). Even the albums showing the smallest percentage rises over this period has more than doubled in sales," HMV reported.

Whilst the largest percentage rises have been shown by Burial (1004%) and Portico Quartet (754%), those albums started from a relatively low base. In actual terms the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize winners, Elbow, have generated the most additional sales of any of the shortlisted artists.

"We're also seeing a pick up in sales of Elbow's previous releases as well," Castaldo revealed. "If the main purpose of the Nationwide Mercury Prize is to shine a light on music that deserves to be listened to by a wider audience, then Elbow are certainly making a lot of new fans right now, while our sales suggest that many of the other shortlisted artists are also connecting with the mainstream."

To see the 12 nominated albums, ranked by % sales rise, click here.