OprahThanks to illegal digital downloading, album sales are on a continuous decline. And as sales keep sliding, the music industry keeps looking for ways to make big events out of record releases. There have been partnerships with big retail companies (such as Walmart’s exclusive with AC/DC’s Black Ice), large-scale live shows (such as Jay-Z’s event before the release of The Blueprint III), and exciting fan contests (such as Pearl Jam’s artwork scavenger hunt for Backspacer). But as rollingstone.com reports, one sure way to guarantee an album’s success is Oprah Winfrey.

For example, Canadian singer Michael Buble’s new album Crazy Love went to the top of the charts after he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which led Variety magazine to examine what they are calling the “Oprah Effect.”

“Oprah is the one thing everyone wants,” Diarmuid Quinn, president of Reprise Records, told Variety. “If you get that call back from her production people, my god, it’s the Holy Grail.”

For years, Oprah’s Book Club has been credited for pushing under-the-radar books to the top of the bestseller lists. So, it’s no doubt that the daytime TV queen’s level of promotion power has made the easy transition into music. Recent success stories credited to Oprah include Whitney Houston’s I Look to You and Barbra Streisand’s Love is the Answer, the latter of which beat out new albums by Paramore and Mariah Carey to the top of the charts.

Variety also suggests that Oprah saved Journey. About a year after the band’s album Revelation was released, they appeared on Oprah’s Oct. 5 episode. The next week, Revelation sales increased by 681 per cent.

However, one of the biggest beneficiaries thanks to Oprah is perhaps the young, deep-voiced Josh Groban. In October 2007, the musician’s Christmas album, Noel, debuted quietly on the Billboard Top 200. However, after appearing as one of “Oprah’s Favorite Things” on Oprah’s show seven weeks after its release, sales of Noel skyrocketed, and the record topped the charts in early December. Noel spent five consecutive weeks at the top of the charts, a new record for a Christmas album. The CD experienced a sales increase each of those five weeks following its appearance on the Oprah show. By the end of the year, Noel ended up with just over 3.5 million in sales, making it the best-selling album of 2007.

So what’s next on Oprah’s promotion schedule? Movies? TV? Fashion? No doubt tons of people will tune in to find out.






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