Posthumous Hipsters?Death seems to hold a strange significance in the world of music. It often seems to be the case that an artist’s albums start flying off the shelves once they’re dead. A good song can immediately become a great song and an album which wasn’t appreciated in its day can all of a sudden go down as one of the most influential and groundbreaking records of all time. For example, Nick Drake’s 1969 album ‘Five Leaves Left’ barely sold a copy when he was alive. But now, according to NME it is the 74th greatest album of all time. It begs the question; would it be the same if Nick Drake were alive today?

If you are a musician that is stuck in the realms of ‘cult’ success…try dying. It might entice the posthu-mous hipsters to come crawling through the wood-work. You won’t know it, but you may end up selling millions of records and securing your legacy as one of the greats of our generation.

Lou Reed has recently passed away. It is truly a sad loss to music. Now we can’t compare Lou Reed to the likes of Nick Drake because Reed was appreci-ated in his time. He inspired a generation to pick an instrument and form a band. The Velvet Un-derground was one of the most influential bands of the late 60s and their music is still loved to this day. Though, the sales statistics immediately after Lou’s passing are quite interesting…According to Billboard.com, on the week of Lou’s death his album sales increased by 607% and sales of the Velvet Underground increased by 236% according. Surely these figures are enough to raise a few eyebrows.

Whilst thousands of Velvet Underground fans mourned the passing of their fallen hero, how many of them do you think had to endure that soul de-stroying and all too familiar conversation with the posthumous hipster? It usually goes something like this… “Oh I can’t believe he’s gone. I’ve always been such a HUGE fan”, sais the hipster. Though when asked what their favourite album is, the hipster is stumped and can only respond with… “Jeez they’re all good…um… what’s the one with the Banana on the cover called again”? Alas the hipster is exposed.

Some may say that this is unfair and just the ram-blings of a disgruntled music snob. Lou Thompson (Founder of the British Elvis Presley fan club) takes a more optimistic view when considering the rea-sons behind massive posthumous sales. Reflecting on Elvis, Thompson states “I’m not going to say that Elvis’ death sucked in more fans, what I’m saying is that at the time it reignited the fire within the fans that may have lapsed a little bit”. In comparing Elvis to Lou Reed, Thompson went on to say “there will always be an upsurge in people wanting to reflect on Lou Reed’s material”.

With that said, the sales stats of other deceased art-ists do make some interesting reading. Neilson SoundScan published figures of Amy Wine-house’s sales after her death in July 2011. Winehouse has sold a sum of 855,000 albums since her death in the U.S. Comparatively - she moved 58,000 in all of 2010 and 44,000 in 2011 before she died. In the eight days following her death, she sold 110,000 albums. So essentially after she died, she sold more albums in just over a week than in 2010 and half of 2011 combined.

Ray Charles’ 2004 album ‘Genius Loves Company’ sold 3.2 million copies after it was released two months after his death. Also ‘Pearl’ by Janis Joplin was released three months after she died of a heroin overdose. The album topped the charts in 1971 and has since sold 8 million copies according to Neilson SoundScan.

Ultimately what can be taken from this is that there is generally a significant rise in artist sales after death. But it is up to us how we view it. Do we choose the cynical view, where we might think that those inflated sales come from pretenders who are ignorant of music until they’ve read an article in BBC about a deceased musician and all of sudden jump on a band wagon? Or do we believe that it is rekindling of the fire amongst long lost fans, who want to look back with fond nostalgia and reflect on the songs that they once loved, or perhaps new fans who innocently want to uncover the music that our befallen artists have left behind.