After Kylie Minogue album hits No.1 in the UK and Australia, artist’s global streams may be the bigger story for BMG

It’s been a jubilant few days for BMG‘s recorded music team – after Kylie Minogue’s latest album, Tension, hit the No.1 spot in both the UK and her native Australia on Friday (September 29).

It was Minogue’s third consecutive No.1 album on BMG, landing 53,000 sales-equivalent units in its debut UK chart week – outselling the rest of the Top 5 combined.

Yet driven by the not-insignificant hit status of Tension’s lead single – Padam Padam – there is a less market-specific story to consider here, too.

Tension’s global streams as of Sunday (October 1), says BMG, stood at approximately 170 million.

At the same point post-release, Kylie Minogue’s previous album, Disco – released less than three years ago – had amassed just 25 million global streams.

“We’re at nearly seven times the number of global streams we had then, “ says BMG President Repertoire & Marketing UK Alistair Norbury. “Our key focus for Kylie [with Tension] has been on building her streaming audience”.

Going hand-in-hand with this strategy has been a concerted drive to build Kylie’s international presence. BMG says that the No.1 market for Tension is expected not to be the UK or the artist’s native Australia, but the US.

Indeed, on Monday (October 2), adding to its UK and Australia chart performance, Tension officially landed at No.21 on the Billboard 200 in the US – the artist’s highest placing on that chart in over a decade.

Thanks largely to the pre-album success of Padam Padam, tracks from Tension in the US have already racked up more than 45 million streams (across audio and video services), according to Luminate data.

“This campaign shows that it’s wrong to assume, as many do, that established artists don’t stream.”

Alistair Norbury, BMG

That’s more than half the size of the lifetime streaming figure (83.7m) attracted by DISCO in the US to date, following its release in November 2020.

Padam Padam itself has already secured over 35 million streams in the US to date, per Luminate data.

A significant amount of credit for Kylie’s global streaming success with Tension, then, can be attributed to Padam Padam, but Alistair Norbury also credits Minogue’s “unstinting engagement with our teams around the world”.

“This campaign shows that it’s wrong to assume, as many do, that established artists don’t stream,” he adds.

“It can be a long haul. It requires the kind of commitment Kylie has demonstrated and a label with a long-term perspective like BMG. But we are proving that it is possible even for artists who first came of age long before streaming to build a viable streaming business.”

“We are proving that it is possible even for artists who first came of age long before streaming to build a viable streaming business.”

Alistair Norbury, BMG

Tension’s No.1 chart performance arrived in the same month that BMG announced it would be going ‘direct’ on distribution for its own streaming releases in the future.

Since 2017, BMG’s digital releases have typically been distributed by Warner Music Group‘s ADA. That agreement will come to an end towards the end of this year.Music Business Worldwide