MUMBAI: On Monday, 11 January, the death of David Bowie shook every corner of every newsroom around the world. Bowie died on Sunday following an 18-month fight with cancer. The death of the legendary singer was announced on his official Facebook page.
There is a trend that occurs when any star dies. People tend to buy albums, download songs to listen to. In these modern times, the ability to stream an artist’s music instantly has majorly changed the way we mourn.
Not only did Bowie’s death shake newsrooms, it took social media, music streaming services and social media interactions by storm. It increased the streaming plays online for the rock icon’s catalogues.
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According to streaming service Spotify, streaming was up to 2700 percent compared to a day earlier. The data provided to Quartz by Spotify shows more than five times as many streams of David Bowie music was played between the hours of 7 am to 4 pm GMT yesterday.
More than four million users on Spotify streamed Bowie in the last month and nearly 81,000 of them for the first time on Monday and continue to do so. The people who were involved in the streaming surge were from Bowie’s home nation – the United Kingdom, followed by Australia, Iceland, Ireland and New Zealand.
Pandora reported that on 1 December, there were 574 Bowie station adds. As of Monday (11 January), the platform was up to nearly 200,000 and expecting to reach to a mark which shows about 35,000 percent growth.
The social media site paid a tribute to Bowie:
Throughout David Bowie's astonishing music career, he shape-shifted unpredictably. One thing that remained a constant during Bowie’s many phases – he was always relevant.Blog: pdora.co/1SeHKzx
Posted by Pandora on Monday, January 11, 2016
On iTunes charts, Bowie’s tracks and albums are at the top of the charts, even those that are decades old. Bowie’s hit ‘Space Oddity’ from 1969 was the fifth most downloaded track on iTunes on Monday, according to the real-time chart in Apple’s online music store
The iconic rock star celebrated his 69th birthday and released his 25th studio album; ‘Blackstar’ on Friday which could hit the number 1 spot on the U.K. album charts later this week.
Analytics from Google showed that the top searched song by Bowie in last 24 hours was ‘Heroes’ from his 1977 album of the same name. ‘Space Oddity’, Starman’ and ‘Let’s Dance’ were in Google’s top search list.
According to Sunday Times Rich List, Bowie has 140 million albums sold since his first release in 1967, 111 singles averaging from two a year during his career, 51 music videos along with movie roles in ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, Labyrinth’, 25 studio albums including ‘Blackstar’ which was released two days before his death.
