VMAS #1 ON SOCIALS AS KACEY, MORE GET A BOOST

MTV’s VMAs show was the year’s #1 social telecast—beating the Grammys and, for the first time ever, the Super Bowl—according to data-crunchers, and Kacey Musgraves was the artist benefiting most from that activity, delivering a powerful performance to an audience that was largely unfamiliar with her. Musgraves’ overall streaming, at 22m+, spiked 176% in the seven days following the show, and streaming of her new Interscope/Mercury Nashville set, star-crossed, increased 170% to 1.3m. Her streaming catalog spiked 69% on the day following the show (+2.5m from the prior seven-day average), while sales rose 163%.

Justin Bieber’s “Ghosts” and Machine Gun Kelly’s “Papercuts” also saw measurable boosts in sales. See the infographic below (especially if you like infographics).

ViacomCBS exec and VMA maven Bruce Gillmer is still playing with his abacus; his team explains that the metric of the moment, total minutes consumed (TMC), combines… uh… shit, our eyes kinda glazed over, but it apparently puts all the screens people see stuff on into a formula that encompasses long and short form, digital and social and “L3” (live plus two repeats) to tell you what it all meant.

Anyway, we still want our MTV.