The truest measure of artist traction is familiarity and the most successful artists are those whose informed awareness is 100% or as near as damn it across all demographics. Informed awareness means “Yes, I have an opinion on this artist” and high informed awareness is typically a function of long-standing commercial success or a sustained and highly effective TV/PR campaign and in most cases it is both.

Top 20 artists ranked by Informed Awareness

Madonna
 
Robbie Williams
 
Spice Girls
 
Michael Jackson
 
Britney Spears
 
Kylie Minogue
 
Elton John
 
Take That
 
Amy Winehouse
 
Westlife
 
Girls Aloud
 
Justin Timberlake
 
U2
 
James Blunt
 
Sugababes
 
The Beatles
 
Eminem
 
Will Young
 
Jennifer Lopez
 
Beyonce
 

Reaching 100% familiarity takes an immense amount of investment and in most cases requires many years of commercial success. For most of these artists there isn’t a week that goes by without a headline and many of them still have active recording / touring lives. Being talked about is critical to building an emotional connection. An artist that isn’t talked about will not gain in familiarity and will have problems selling. Sure, there is room in the long tail for these artists but this shouldn’t be an excuse. Great music alone isn’t enough to enter the 100 Club. Despite his massive songs Gnarls Barkley still stands at about 80% informed awareness; Lenny Kravitz has been around for 20 years and still only scores 80% while former Blue star Simon Webbe, with a double platinum album under his belt scores just 64% informed awareness. Conversely, Leona Lewis is close to entering the club with her current 92% informed awareness.

For many new artists this is a positive challenge. Commercial album success on the back of low informed awareness indicates the potential scope. Number one album sellers Scouting For Girls score just 64%; The Ting Tings 33% and Alphabeat 30%.

Whilst the digital age presents its all too familiar challenges to the music industry, it does offer great opportunities for growing informed awareness. Never has it been easier to spread a message. There are countless opportunities to broadcast your message to millions of people – the challenge is to have a message, a story that connects by being distinctive and relevant and is capable of standing out from the rest of the noise.