Want to know what a single week looks like at Stem? Here are three barriers our artists broke on the week of January 30th:
1. Hardy’s “The Mockingbird & The Crow” debuts at #1 on Billboard’s Current Country Albums and Current Rock Albums charts
Distributed by Stem since his first release, 2018’s “This Ole Boy,” HARDY used his new album to catapult from one of country’s premier songwriters to one of its most high-profile artists. “The Mockingbird & The Crow” also reached #1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales, Current Digital Albums, and Independent Albums charts, while reaching #4 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart.
Stem has distributed HARDY’s record label, Big Loud, since 2019. Recently, we connected them with the Winston House in Venice, California, where they threw an intimate label showcase the week of his album’s release. HARDY introduced the night’s closing act, Blame My Youth.
13 songs from “The Mockingbird & The Crow” were featured on 98 official playlists, with playlist covers on Spotify’s All About Country, Spotify’s Hot Country, and Amazon’s Rock Arena.
Both Fallon and the Today Show invited HARDY on to promote the album, where he performed “Wait in the Truck” with Lainey Wilson and “Screen.” While sitting at the front row of a January 2nd wrestling match, HARDY joined the action, jumping out of his seat, over the ropes, and smashing the WWE’s Elias with the wrestler’s own guitar. Whether in the ring or on the charts, HARDY can’t be contained.
2. Kimmel invites Justine Skye to play her #1 TikTok track “Collide”
When Justine Skye’s 2014 track “Collide” got a spark of virality in the second half of 2022, her team didn’t sit back, cross their fingers, and hope it would last. They went on the offensive and made that viral spark a forest fire. Stem helped with a Scale advance, giving them the leverage they needed to turn the song into TikTok’s #1 track by the beginning of 2023.
On January 30th, she performed her catalog hit on Jimmy Kimmel Live. And she wasn’t the only Stem artist invited to that stage this January – bbno$ performed a medley of his hits LaLaLa and Edamame on Kimmel two weeks earlier.
Since she first stepped into independence, Stem has supported Justine, putting up a billboard for her 2019 “Bare with Me” album and sending custom wine bottles to editors and tastemakers before the release of her 2021 album “Space and Time.”
3. Three Stem artists honored at the 2023 Grammys
On Sunday evening, three Stem artists were honored at the Grammys – Sabrina Claudio, the singer and songwriter whose new album “Archives & Lullabies” reached #2 on the Apple R&B album chart, the Gullah jazz ensemble Ranky Tanky, and the multi-platinum producer Thaddeus Dixon.
Sabrina Claudio was a writer on the Beyoncé track “Plastic Off the Sofa,” which won Best Traditional R&B performance. Ranky Tanky won Best Regional Roots Music Album for their “Live at the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.” And Thaddeus Dixon’s “Big Energy Live” was nominated for Best Melodic Rap Performance.