Oscar Nods: Winning Moments in Viewing, Tweeting and Music Sales

With a hotly debated host and a bevy of highly contested award categories, this year’s Academy Awards ceremony was a big media hit. And the flurry of opinions on everything Oscar-related—from who wore their tuxedo the best, to which jokes were off-color—helped drive TV viewership, social media buzz and music sales.

According to Nielsen, an average of 40.4 million TV viewers tuned in to the star-studded telecast on ABC, up more than one million viewers from last year. The event also prompted more than 6.4 million Oscar-related Tweets from 1.6 million people, according to data from SocialGuide. Emcee Seth McFarlane, creator of TV’s Family Guy, garnered the most Tweets, as his occasionally controversial material prompted more than 52,000 mentions across Twitter. The top Oscar moment of the night, however, came when Jennifer Lawrence took home the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Silver Linings Playbook. SocialGuide also found that close to 44,000 Tweets were sent into the Twitterverse when the actress hit the stage to claim her golden statue.

Live performances of all the nominated songs helped drive Tweets and lift music sales. Digital sales for Adele’s Oscar-winning song “Skyfall”, which the singer performed live at the awards, saw an increase of 56 percent from the prior week. Consumers have now purchased 1.6 million digital copies of the song.

Digital sales of the other Best Song nominees—all of which were performed during the telecast—also grew after they were performed. That exposure was especially beneficial to self-taught composer, songwriter and producer J. Ralph, whose song “Before My Time” (from the movie Chasing Ice) saw the largest increase in digital track sales among the nominees—consumer purchases increased by 96 times following the ceremony.

Digital download sales also jumped after the show for the Les Misérables song “One Day More” (performed by the movie’s cast, up 147%), “Goldfinger” (performed by Dame Shirley Bassey, up 310%), “And I Am Telling You” (performed by Jennifer Hudson, up 246%) and” The Way We Were” (performed by Barbra Streisand, up 209%).