Skip to content
  • HOME
  • ARTISTS
  • NEWS
  • DISCOVER
  • ABOUT
Menu
  • HOME
  • ARTISTS
  • NEWS
  • DISCOVER
  • ABOUT
Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube
Back to overview

CHART ANALYSIS: The coronavirus crisis also hits the music charts

April 6, 2020
Goldstone - All I Know

These are hard times for the international music community. The impact of the coronavirus crisis is already slightly visible in the monthly artist chart: only a few newcomers, more feel-good music is on the up, and hardest hit Italy is losing temporarily its musical interest in the rest of Europe.

Many releases are postponed because of the closed music clubs and uncertainties about the summer festivals. With closed borders, there is no opportunity for promotion in other countries. But there is not only a crisis on the border crossing supply side, many radio stations also reflect the closed borders in their music policy. They stick to comfort food: well-known classics, up-tempo feel-good hits, less new material and to support the local music community they tend to play more local music. For example, Belgian station Studio Brussel started to play far more Belgian product under the hashtag #ikluisterbelgisch (‘I listen to Belgian music’).

Italy is the country which is hardest hit by the virus right now. I was wondering if Italian radio would play less European talent – and that seems to be true. A quick look in the weekly Music Moves Europe Talent airplay chart shows that Italian radio only supports one title out of the top 100 this week: French dance act Goldstone. A year ago and also two years ago Italy supported seven titles out of the top 100. For Spain, which is also in deep crisis, the picture is less clear. It now supports four titles, while it supported eight titles two years ago, and five one year ago.

Another alarming measure is where the border of 10% of the total chart points of the #1 in the weekly airplay chart lies. For the last three years, the record around #20 had ten per cent of the total chart points of the #1 – now it is at #10. That means that there are currently only ten instead of twenty bigger border crossing radio hits.

Meanwhile, March was a great month for mostly feel-good pop music. Risers include German pop singers Ilira at #38, Kim Petras at #45, French dance producers Goldstone at #50, Swedish pop singer Viktor Leksell at #57, Austrian pop singer Mathea at #58, Swedish dance-pop producers Jubël at #70 and British soul-pop chanteuse Arlo Parks at #78.

As expected, there are only a few newcomers on indie labels in the lower regions of the chart. First up at #82 is Number, an experimental pop band consisting of former members of the British instrumental jazz-pop band Red Snapper. Their single Red Flag (Sunday Best) gets a lot of airplay on Polish radio. At #84 we welcome Portuguese singer Pongo, a winner of the 2020 Music Moves Europe Talent Awards. She mixes electronic dance music with kuduro, energetic dance music from Angola. Her single UWA (Caroline) is popular on British radio. And at #86 there’s a new entry for Goldband, who combine funny Dutch lyrics with dance music. Their self-released Alles Kapot (‘Everything is broken’) is understood on Belgian radio too.

Finally, at #92 enters Italian singer-songwriter Julia Bardo. She was born in Brescia, the European epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. She moved to Manchester, where she was signed to the indie label Wichita. Poland and Sweden are the supporters for her indie-pop song I Wanna Feel Love.

Stay safe, stay healthy – on behalf of the whole charts team.

Menno Visser
Music journalist and radio professional from The Netherlands

Proud partners of THE music moves Europe awards

About

  • About MME Awards
  • Jury
  • Nominees 2019
  • Nominees 2020
  • Nominees 2021
  • Privacy policy

© 2021 All rights reserved

Partners

  • Partners

Media

  • News
  • Downloads
Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings.

  • HOME
  • ARTISTS
  • NEWS
  • DISCOVER
  • ABOUT
Menu
  • HOME
  • ARTISTS
  • NEWS
  • DISCOVER
  • ABOUT
Facebook-f Twitter Instagram
Music Moves Europe Awards
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

The Cookies We Set

  • Site preferences cookies

    In order to provide you with a great experience on this site we provide the functionality to set your preferences for how this site runs when you use it. In order to remember your preferences we need to set cookies so that this information can be called whenever you interact with a page is affected by your preferences.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

3rd Party Cookies

Third Party Cookies

In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. The following section details which third party cookies you might encounter through this site.

  • This site uses Google Analytics which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solution on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so we can continue to produce engaging content.For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
  • From time to time we test new features and make subtle changes to the way that the site is delivered. When we are still testing new features these cookies may be used to ensure that you receive a consistent experience whilst on the site whilst ensuring we understand which optimisations our users appreciate the most.
  • We also use social media buttons and/or plugins on this site that allow you to connect with your social network in various ways. For these to work the following social media sites including; {List the social networks whose features you have integrated with your site?:12}, will set cookies through our site which may be used to enhance your profile on their site or contribute to the data they hold for various purposes outlined in their respective privacy policies.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!

Cookie Policy

More information about our Cookie Policy