The death of iconic rock star David Bowie led to a massive global online wake on Monday, while the iTunes Canada album and song charts look very different today.
If ever you were in doubt about Bowie’s impact on modern culture, even the quickest look at online activity in the days following his death reveals a huge legacy.
On Facebook, 35 million people generated 100 million interactions about Bowie’s death in the first 12 hours after the news broke. The top five posts came from the official David Bowie page (which generated more than 380,000 shares and 85,000 comments), followed by British actor/comedian Eddie Izzard and former Beatle Paul McCartney.
Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais, who incorporated Bowie to hilarious effect in his 2005-07 sitcom Extras,had the third most-popular Facebook post about Bowie.
Bowie’s home country, the United Kingdom, generated the most Facebook activity in the wake of his death, followed by Australia, Iceland, Ireland and New Zealand.
According to Spotify spokesperson Graham James, plays of David Bowie’s catalogue on the streaming service increased 2,700% in the wake of his death (Spotify does not break down plays by country).
On YouTube, plays of his haunting final video “Lazarus” – which opens with the words “Look up here, I’m in heaven/I’ve got scars that can’t be seen” – have surpassed 16 million.
On the iTunes Canada store, Bowie occupied six of the top and nine of the top 20 positions on the album sales chart as of Tuesday afternoon, topped by his latest release Blackstar – which was officially released just two days before he died.
The Best of Bowie occupied the number two spot, while his landmark 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars occupied the fifth spot, followed by Hunky Dory in seventh and The Best of David Bowie 1969-74 in eighth.
His song “Space Oddity” was the third-most-purchased track, according to the online music store.
Elsewhere on iTunes, six of the top purchased videos belonged to Bowie, including his 1985 Live Aid collaboration with Mick Jagger “Dancing in the Street,” and the landmark video for “Ashes to Ashes.”
Bowie also had three of the top-selling concert films on iTunes, led by David Bowie: Serious Moonlight and followed by David Bowie: A Reality Tour and David Bowie: Glass Spider.
