Sampha has returned to the Top 10 with debut album Process, following his Hyundai Mercury Prize victory last night.
Having peaked at No. 7 last February, the Young Turks/XL Recordings release is back in the same position after a 517% week-on-week increase in sales as a result of the Mercury Prize exposure.
The South London singer-songwriter’s album moved 152-7 on weekly sales of 4,815, according to Official Charts Company data. It is the first time that a Mercury Prize-winning album has entered or re-entered the Top 10 having been outside the top-100 the week before. Total sales stand at 31,247.
The album benefitted from a 458% surge in streams, with physical (CD/vinyl) and digital purchases growing by 540%. The song Sampha performed at the Mercury Prize Awards Show, (No One Knows Me) Like The Piano, was streamed over 342,000 times – a rise of 265% on the previous chart week.
Geoff Taylor, chief executive BPI, said: “The Hyundai Mercury Prize has a rich heritage in introducing new artists and their work to a much wider audience of music fans, and 2017 is no exception. All the shortlisted artists will have received a boost in sales or profile, although as the Prize winner Sampha is seeing by far the biggest increase – propelling him towards the upper reaches of the Official Albums Chart and underlining his emergence as an exciting new British talent.
”The live performances by all the shortlisted artists on the night were spectacular, and we’d encourage any fan who missed them first time around to catch them on BBC iPlayer.”
The BPI provides operational support to the Mercury Prize, and Taylor gave Music Week his take on Sampha and the ceremony in the third year since taking over. Young Turks' Caius Pawson told Music Week that the win was a "phenomenal achievement".
Other shortlisted albums enjoying a sales increase - albeit from a low sales base - in the week since the awards ceremony include Kate Tempest's Let Them Eat Chaos (+59%), Glass Animals' How To Be A Human Being (+35%), Loyle Carner’s Yesterday’s Gone (+30%), The xx’s I See You (+23%) and The Big Moon's Love In The 4th Dimension (+19%).
FOLLOW 
