Miley Cyrus is reaping the benefits of her buzzed-about performance on the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) on Aug. 25 — both in sales and social metrics.
During the VMAs telecast, Cyrus performed her Billboard Hot 100 top 10 single “We Can’t Stop,” and then participated in a medley of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and “Give It 2 U” (with 2 Chainz and Kendrick Lamar).
Her performance came a little more than 24 hours after her forthcoming album, “Bangerz,” became available for pre-order in the iTunes Store. At press time, the set ranked at No. 5 on the digital retailer’s top sellers tally. “Bangerz” is set for release on Oct. 8 through RCA Records.
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Industry sources say that Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop” will likely see a slight dip in download sales for the week ending Aug. 25, but will perk up the following week. (In the week ending Aug. 18, it sold 148,000 downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan.) The song may generate a gain of 10% to 20% in the frame that ends Sept. 1.
Because the single itself is fairly old (it premiered in June) there is more focus on Cyrus’ new song, “Wrecking Ball.” The cut premiered on iTunes late Saturday night as part of the “Bangerz” pre-order and is off to a robust sales start. Sources suggest that it moved between 80,000 and 90,000 copies in less than two full days on sale.
MTV VMAs Average 10.1 Million Viewers, Up 66 Percent
Thus, Cyrus will likely end up with two songs in the top 20 on this week’s Digital Songs chart — which will be released on Aug. 28 and reflects the sales week that ended on Aug. 25.
Truly, the full sales impact of the show will not be felt until next week after we have a full week of post-VMA sales to examine (for the week ending Sept. 1.
Social Statistics Sizzle
According to Twitter, the “We Can’t Stop” and “Blurred Lines” medley with Cyrus and Thicke garnered 306,100 Tweets per minute during the East Coast airing of the show. To compare, last year’s VMAs had a peak of 98,307 Tweets per minute, whereas the Presidential election night last year saw a Tweets per minute peak of 327,452.
The conclusion of Justin Timberlake’s performance on the show was the second-most Tweeted moment of the VMAs: 219,800 Tweets per minute.
According to Next Big Sound, Cyrus earned 50,000 new Facebook page likes on Sunday — up tremendously from the 30,000 she tallied on Saturday. Comparably, Timberlake’s Facebook logged 122,000 new page likes on Sunday — close to five times the number of likes he earned on Saturday.
The two-and-a-half hour VMAs telecast averaged 10.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen — a 66% gain from last year’s draw of 6.1 million. The most-watched VMAs telecast remains 2011’s installment, delivering 12.4 million viewers.