Peter Ruppert's Blog

A quick look at the list of the most popular artists with teens reveals a category dominated by male-fronted Rock Bands. So not only aren’t there any female artists, but there also aren’t any solo male acts to be found.

The list is driven by all aspects of popularity which means familiarity, love, like and low dislikes. Many of these artists are very familiar with teens and deeply respected by them but this doesn’t necessarily equate to most loved which is what really matters.

The way to get a more accurate picture is to isolate the Love scores and disregard all other aspects of popularity. So who are the top 20 most loved artists in the teenage segment? (13-19)

The Chili Peppers still make it to number one but the Stereophonics, Bon Jovi, Plain White T’s and Kasabian don’t quite cut it and their places are now taken by My Chemical Romance and surprisingly three solo artists, Justin Timberlake, Amy Winehouse and Rihanna.

The main reason why these solo artists haven’t made it into the Top 20 PopScores is because of their degree of polarisation. By that we mean they are much Loved but also greatly Disliked. For example Amy Winehouse scores a dislike of 36%, Justin Timberlake 35%, Rihanna 29%.

Does this tell us something - are solo artists generally more polarising?

The average Love for top 50 solo artists is 12%, the average Dislike is 18%.

The average Love for a band in the Top 50 is 14% and the average Dislike is 12%. That’s 50% greater Dislike on average for Solo artists.

The same exercise for teens reveals:

The average Love for Top 50 solo artists is 13% and the average Dislike is 25%.

The average Love for a band is 17% and the average Dislike is 15%

So, there’s clearly less Love for solo artists and an incredible 67% greater Dislike. This is reason enough to expect very few solo artists, male or female, in the most popular lists with teens.

So what does all this mean? For labels, solo artists are often a lot less hassle than signing bands and therefore the attraction of running solo projects is well appreciated. However, whilst one can’t deny the success of artists like Robbie Williams, Paolo Nutini, James Morrisson, Justin Timberlake, Pink and many others it’s far harder and takes a lot longer to build a lasting emotional connection with audiences.

Why? Because that long-term emotional connection with an audience typically needs to start in the young segment, which is notoriously difficult to keep entertained whilst maintaining credibility.

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If in doubt join a band….