Bob Marley rides the charts again
From Caribbean360
The Jamaican reggae icon jumped 25 places to break into the Top 10 of Billboard’s Social 50 chart last week.
CALIFORNIA, United States, Wednesday July 24, 2013 – Jamaican reggae legend Bob Marley is riding the charts again, having broken into the Top 10 of Billboard’s Social 50 chart last week.
According www.billboard.com, Marley, who remains the most famous and revered Jamaican more than 30 years after his death from cancer, jumped to ninth place from number 34.
In an article written by William Gruger, the sudden ascent was attributed to a recent partnership with television sports network ESPN.
The network has been showcasing Marley’s music since July and will make his catalogue a major part of ESPN’s upcoming X-Games programming.
According to Gruger’s article, “Marley has one of the largest followings of any deceased musician. With 44 million Facebook fans, only Michael Jackson has a larger audience (61 million fans) among deceased artistes.”
The Social 50 ranks the most popular artistes on electronic media YouTube, Vevo, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, Wikipedia, Myspace and Instagram.
The chart’s methodology blends weekly additions of friends, fans and followers, along with artiste page views, song plays and reactions, as measured by music analytics company Next Big Sound.
Far more than just Jamaica’s most outstanding musical export, Marley is remembered for his powerful message of unity and respect which continues to resonate in the country of his birth and around the world.
Since its release in 1984, three years after his death, Marley’s Legend compilation has annually sold over 250,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and it is only the 17th album to exceed sales of 10 million copies since SoundScan began its tabulations in 1991.
In 1994, Bob Marley was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in December of 1999 his 1977 album Exodus was named Album of the Century by Time Magazine.
“One Love” was designated Song of the Millennium by the BBC, and Marley was bestowed with The Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
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