There's been some concern recently over how well or unwell pop music albums have been selling (we admit to have a role in this). Based on social media statistics from this weekend's American Music Awards however, people have no problem watching the same pop stars on television.
The AMA's dominated Nielsen's tracking of Twitter usage during programming, generating 7.6 million tweets during the broadcast and in the few hours leading up to and following the program. Second place, last Tuesday's episode of The Voice, generated 778,000 tweets. Perhaps more impressive than the sheer number of tweets was the number of people tweeting: More than 1.5 million users authored the 140-character posts throughout the night.
Female pop stars were the obvious main source of attention. The most-tweeted moment was Taylor Swift's receiving Artist of The Year, bringing in 71,365 tweets a minute. Miley Cyrus's closing performance brought in 64,929 a minute, and Lady Gaga's performance merited 41,571 tweets per minute. Interestingly, the most popular for the entire night was none of the above, but Ariana Grande. The Best New Artist recipient was directly mentioned in 231,996. One Direction's Niall Horan was the second most popular figure, barely edging Cyrus by 433 tweets.
The show was a success in terms of viewership as well. According to Nielsen, it had ratings increases in all demographics compared to 2012. Ages 12-17 saw the most marked improvement, up nearly 86 percent from last year, nearly doubling last year's total.
