Conventions & Awards

Bruno Mars Was Grammy’s Biggest Winner According To Social Media Data

Grammy-logoBy Liv Buli (@lbuli)), Resident Data Journalist for music analytics company Next Big Sound.

What was your favorite moment of the Grammys last night? Five bucks says you tweeted about it. 

From Taylor Swift’s Alice-in-Wonderland-esque opening performance, to LL Cool J’s final shout-out to the Beastie Boys, the 55th annual Grammy awards went off with great fanfare, proving once again to be the biggest night of the year in music. Dubbed the “hashtag Grammys” for good reason, socially speaking it was one of the biggest years yet. Next Big Sound tracked five times the normal volume of tweets during the ceremony. With all this online activity surrounding the event, it makes sense to break down the data.


image from newventurist.comA night like this most definitely has an impact on artists and their social fan base. Looking at Grammy nominees for the past several years, we found an average increase of more than 350% on Wikipedia page views and close to 120% in new Twitter followers the day after the ceremony. But it pays to take the actual title, the winner’s circle saw an average increase in excess of 1500% on Wikipedia versus around 175% for those who didn’t take home the golden gramophone.

It was a great night for The Black Keys, Mumford & Sons, Gotye, Frank Ocean and fun., who all received major awards, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Best New Artist. They all saw immediate spikes in their data, with the latter seeing an increase of more than 560% in followers on Twitter this week, compared to the previous.

Grammy-chart-1

Of the evening’s nominees and performers, interestingly enough it was Bruno Mars that saw the biggest boost in terms of new fans, plays and views. Mars, whose latest album Unorthodox Jukebox was not eligible for nomination this year, performed as part of the Bob Marley tribute alongside Sting, Rihanna, Damian and Ziggy Marley. Skrillex, who took home an award in every EDM-related category, came second behind Mars overall, but topped the winners list.

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Social reaction from the event itself aside, the question still remains – did the best man win? It depends on how you look at it.

New York indie pop band fun., who beat out The Lumineers, Alabama Shakes, Frank Ocean and Hunter Hayes in the Best New Artist category (as well as landing the Song of Year award for We Are Young), were not in fact the band that grew the most this year in terms of fan base, nor are they the most popular of these artists.

R&B crooner Frank Ocean has almost twice the fan base of fun., with close to 3 million fans on Facebook and Twitter combined, and while they have a lower total, Folk band The Lumineers grew by close to 5000% from the beginning of 2012 to the end of the official voting period, compared 600% for the winners.

But then again, as Katy Perry pointed out, she was never even nominated for this award, but still has her own eyelash line. In your face Bon Iver.

Photo Credit: Official Grammy Logo

Liv Buli is the resident data journalist for music analytics company Next Big Sound. Buli is a graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and her work has appeared in Newsweek Daily Beast, The New York Times Local East Village, Hypebot and more.

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  1. They all saw immediate spikes in their data, with the latter seeing an increase of more than 560% in followers on Twitter this week, compared to the previous.

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