Not Predicting the Mercury Music Prize

Here’s an oddity.

Music Week has published a list of albums that Google Play Music says represent the volume of streams that albums eligible for the Mercury Music Prize have achieved.

So they’ve looked at acts that released albums between September, 9 2014 and September 25, 2015. The official shortlist is published in a couple of days.

Google Play Music says it’s not trying to predict the outcome of the nominations but is looking at what’s popular on its service. But I find the list a little curious.

I should say up front that I’ve only personally listened to one of the shortlisted albums (Jamie xx). But the list seems very heavily skewed. So I thought I’d add the album release dates to the list. Here’s what you get.

ArtistAlbum% of StreamsRelease DateEligible Days
Bring Me The HorizonThat’s The Spirit24.16%11 Sept 1514
Jess GlynneI Cry When I Laugh17.95%21 Aug 1535
FoalsWhat Went Down11.33%28 Aug 1528
Years & YearsCommunion10.32%22 Jun 1595
James BayChaos & The Calm8.62%23 Mar 15186
The LibertinesAnthems For Doomed Youth5.29%11 Sep 1514
Krept & KonanThe Long Way Home5.02%3 Jul 1584
Catfish & The BottlemenThe Balcony4.69%15 Sep 14375
Mumford & SonsWilder Mind4.16%4 May 15144
Florence & The MachineHow Big, How Beautiful, How Blue3.28%29 May 15119
Jamie xxIn Colour2.63%29 May 15119
Everything EverythingGet To Heaven2.56%22 Jun 1595

A couple of things immediately jump out at you. The sum of the percentages comes to 100% (100.01%, but that’s rounding error). So these percentages are within the universe of these albums only. I imagine this is to hide the relative sizes of these albums to others.

It also seems very curious that the albums released most recently have the highest percentage of streams. That’s The Spirit apparently achieved a quarter of all streams, yet was only available for two weeks. Whereas Mumford & Sons’ Wilder Mind has been out for a good 6 months yet only got 4%.

That means either those most recently released albums have achieved astonishing playback in a short period of time, or someone has only sampled data from the very recent past, and unsurprisingly, the newest music got streamed the most.

If you chart these figures it becomes a little clearer

It’s by no means a perfect relationship, since popular albums will do well, but it’s clear that the most recent releases get the most plays.

In other words, Google Play Music used a very recent sample to determine its list, which hardly seems a fair way to produce a list as it skews the data towards recent releases that have lots of buzz.

Oh, and of course the Mercury Music Prize is judged on slightly more than popularity, or (I would hope) albums with the biggest marketing budgets. But hey, any PR is good PR right?

[Update 16 October: In completely unsuprising news, the actual Mercury shortlist looks nothing like this list, with only Florence & The Machine and Jamie xx appearing on the real list, and five of the shortlisted albums not having charted at all, which is probably part of the point of the awards.]

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