Mercury winner Debelle leaves label over sales
Mercury winner Speech Debelle leaves label over sales
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By Darren Estwick. |  |
Wednesday, 25, Nov 2009 08:57
By Lewis Bazley.
Speech Debelle, the winner of this year's Mercury Prize for Music, is to leave her record label over underwhelming sales of her debut album.
The 26-year-old was the surprise winner of the Mercury earlier this year but has now blamed her record company Big Dada for poorly distributing her album Speech Therapy.
"The Mercury Prize was on Tuesday, and on Friday there were no more physical albums in the shops," she told BBC 6Music.
"So, on the Mercury weekend, which would have been my biggest selling weekend, people couldn't get it.
"I wasn't disappointed that it didn't sell well, I was disappointed in the people I was working with," added Debelle, whose real name is Corynne Elliot.
The album had sold around 3,000 copies prior to the Mercury win, with sales increasing to just below 10,000 after the Mercury win. But Debelle has pointed to a 40-fold boom in sales on online retailer Amazon as evidence of the demand for her debut album.
"I wasn't on a big label and the machine wasn't there," she explained. "So even though the album won the Mercury, it was still only able to do what the label was capable of doing, which just means that I'm more prepared for next time."
Ninjatune, the parent company of Debelle's former label Big Dada, said the firm had no comment on the rapper's remarks.
She is now in negotiations with other labels, and expects to finalise a new deal in the new year, aiming for a September release for her second album.
"One thing I've learnt is that having bargaining power is important," she added. "It's important to walk into a record label and say 'This is what I have, and these are the kind of terms I want.'"