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American Music Awards-Related Track Sales Up 33%

A who’s-who of A-listers — including One Direction and Taylor Swift — gathered on Nov. 23 in Los Angeles for the 42nd annual American Music Awards. ABC’s three-hour broadcast of the fan-voted event featured 19 performances with more than 25 artists.

Download sales of AMA-performed songs (not including newly released tunes) were up by 30 percent in the two weeks ending Nov. 30, according to Nielsen SoundScan. They shifted 2.1 million compared to 1.6 million in the two earlier weeks (ending Nov. 16).

As Nielsen Music’s tracking week ends every Sunday — and the AMAs were on Sunday, Nov. 23 — we looked at a two-week span of time (Nov. 17 through Nov. 30) to gauge the full impact of the show.

The biggest unit gainer among the songs performed was Swift’s “Blank Space,” which opened the show. It gained by 153,000 downloads in the two weeks ending Nov. 30 (selling a total of 644,000, versus 491,000 in the two weeks earlier).

In terms of percentage gains, the biggest leap is owned by 5 Seconds of Summer’s “What I Like About You,” which rose by 418 percent (to 7,000 downloads). It was followed by Lorde’s “Yellow Flicker Beat” (up 214 percent to 115,000), Charli XCX’s “Break the Rules” (up 118 percent to 24,000) and Imagine Dragons’ “I Bet My Life” (up 96 percent to 93,000).

[Billboard]