Peter Ruppert's Blog

And that love starts with a song. A perfect example of the power of a song and how the love for it translates to love for an artist is seen in this month’s PopScores result for Beyonce.

In September Beyonce’s PopScore stood at a mediocre 17 but by December it had risen to a lofty 26 placing her 49^th overall and in the Top 10 with teenage females.

As the PopScores chart shows the release of the single “If I Were A Boy” in the 3^rd quarter had a pronounced impact upon Beyonce’s positive scores which started to improve and her negatives which began to decline. The trend continued as the single reached Number 1 in November after airplay during October. The positive trend continued with her 2^nd single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) which reached position 14 in December. Following her X-Factor performance with Alexandra Burke “Listen” re-emerged in the singles chart at number 8.

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During December Beyonce’s PopScore increased by a massive 4 points to 26 driven by a strong increase in love of 3% points amongst 13-19 females and 40-49 females. Her love with female teenagers is now at 26% which is over 3 times the average and this propels her into the Top 6 list of most loved artists. She is now closing in on the 3 female artists who claim the Top 10, namely Pink, Christina Aguilera and Rihanna.

With female teens taking the lead it is likely that Beyonce will start to build a stronger connection with adult females in early 09.

As noted, Beyonce’s negative scores have also been in decline for several months. During December the trend continued with a further 4 % point decline to 22%.The largest change is attitude is with teenage males whose dislike fell by a massive 8 % points. We believe this can partially be explained by the change of sound with her single “If I Was A Boy.”

The graph below illustrates how clearly the love for Beyonce correlates inversely with age falling from 26% with teenage females to 6% with over 50 females. Beyonce’s Popscore in the 20+ demos is already strong with an average of 30 and driven by the prospect of “If I Was A Boy” moving to recurrent radio playlists and higher rotations on AC stations we expect Beyonce’s love score and therefore Purchase Propensity to grow significantly in the first half of 09.

This should translate into continuing album sales and a rising PopScore.