Glee-full labels gain as Beatles' record falls

• Mike Barris' trenchant look at digital music (#4)

Got Glee?

The Emmy-winning musical comedy-drama TV series that airs on the Fox network has become a juggernaut – not just of the small screen, but of the digital-music industry.

Glee, which will next air Oct. 26, has had 75 singles appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart – smashing, in a mere 16 months, a record that has stood for 40 years, for most chart appearances by a group; a record held by the Beatles, only the most influential rock band of all time. And with weeks still to go in the current season and the show already picked up for a third season, the Glee ensemble potentially could shatter Elvis Presley’s all-time record of 108 chart appearances.

One of the breakout hits of fall 2009, Glee focuses on the misfits who make up a high-school glee club. It has been called A 'High School Musical' with bite.

(Meet the cast of Glee, here:)

The Glee phenomenon is part and parcel of the digital age. The public’s growing disaffection for CDs in the digital age has hammered revenue at major music labels. But fans apparently can't get enough of Glee: they watch the show, buy the downloads of its songs (more than 11.5 million as of this month, according to Billboard), and go to its cast members' concerts.

Consequently, Glee has the power to boost or re-energize the careers of the artists whose music it features. The week after Glee dedicated an episode to the music of Madonna, the show’s soundtrack debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. The show also boosted sales of Madonna’s new concert CD, released a week before, and pushed her greatest-hits album, Celebration, released in 2009, back onto the chart, checking in at number 86.

(Listen to the cast of Glee performing Madonna's "Open Your Heart," here:)





(Watch the Material Girl herself performing "Open Your Heart," from her 1986 video, here:)

Britney Spears' album sales experienced a similar boost in September. Spears' latest release, November 2009's "The Singles Collection," re-entered the Billboard Top 200 album chart after her appearance on Glee.

Such chart-busting prowess hasn’t been seen since the heyday of Beatlemania in the 1960s. During the week of April 4, 1964 – two months after the Fab Four arrived in the U.S. – the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100, including the top five positions. Those feats remain unmatched; although Glee, which comes out with about seven songs per episode, has the potential to break even that mark, IBIS World analyst Kathleen Ripley told me.

(See the Beatles performing “I Saw Her Standing There” at Washington Coliseum during that first U.S. visit, here:)

(The Beatles, incidentally, are among the few major artists whose recorded catalogue is not available through online music services such as iTunes. Negotations between the band, EMI and iTunes owner Apple Inc. have stalled, ex-Beatle Paul McCartney said in November 2008. "We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it," McCartney said. “But there are a couple of sticking points … They [EMI] want something we’re not prepared to give them.”)

The Glee phenomenon underscores how television shows like this and American Idol are giving the beleaguered music industry a much-needed boost in the digital age. Over the five years to 2010, revenue at major labels fell an estimated 9.7% annually, while TV deal-related revenue surged 15.3%, IBIS World reported.

In 2010, the television production and television broadcasting industries will earn 5.5% of their revenue from music-related content, with the fastest growth coming from prime-time music-focused shows such as American Idol and Glee, IBIS World said. Musical television is expected to garner $1.7 billion in production revenue this year and is anticipated to grow at an annualized rate of 5.8% over the five years to 2015 to $2.2 billion. This is significant growth considering that the television production industry as a whole is expected to increase at an average annual rate of 3.3% during this time to total $36.2 billion in 2015.

IBIS World's Ripley calls Glee's ability to surpass the Beatles' mark after just 16 months in existence on TV "astonishing and astounding."

"I wouldn’t be surprised if (Glee) broke the No.1 record for that Hot 100 appearances held by Elvis Presley," Kathleen told me from Santa Monica, Calif., noting that Glee still has the rest of this season and all of its coming season to topple Elvis' record.

(Check out Elvis performing "Ready Teddy," on the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1956, here:)





The analyst noted that Sony, which has licensing rights to American Idol through 2010, has teamed up with News Corp.'s Fox as Glee’s record label. Under the agreement, Sony has the release-rights to all digital and physical music from the show; the first rights to recording contracts with the show’s cast; and a percentage of sales from merchandising, endorsements, ringtones and live shows.

The agreement will give “fans of the music on the TV show the opportunity to have that instant download, to have that instant satisfaction of being able to listen over and over again to these great songs performed by current television stars,” Kathleen said. 

I'm going to let the cast of Glee close things out this week with their upbeat cover of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin.'" Listen to it, here: