While you can’t exactly call British folk-pop outfit Mumford and Sons a Clear Channel act, they are now part of the Clear Channel family via its agreement with the band’s label Glassnote Entertainment Group.
According to Hollywood Reporter, the band’s sophomore album release “Babel” has moved 600K units in its first week of retail availability. In a sign-of-the-times note, 420K of those sales were digital downloads.
The band is described as one of the special few with appeal that crosses over demographic divides – able to find fans among typical adults, the college crowd and teens. U2 and Coldplay were offered as bands with a similar demographic range.
The band’s first album came out in 2009 and has been a consistent seller week-in and week-out, with 25M sales to date.
Clear Channel’s Tom Poleman told HR that Glassnote has done an excellent job promoting the band, building awareness steadily. The cross-demo appeal makes the multiple format offerings of a major radio group like Clear Channel a valuable promotional asset for such a band – using multiple stations to expose the band’s music to multiple audiences.
Poleman does not discount the credit the band deserves for pulling off this feat, however. They created the music, after all. “It’s incredibly impressive,” he said, “that they’ve brought the banjo back to mainstream radio.”
