Sanremo Giovani: Moving Right Along

I take back everything I said in my last post. The producers clearly weren't seeding these rounds because there's no possible way that Angelica Bove and Sea John were the 1st and 6th seeds in that round, and I have a hard time believing she wasn't one based on studio production values alone. Regardless, it's been less than a week and Sea John is up to 2.8k monthly listeners on Spotify, from 600. Most of that increase (yes, I check daily) has come since Friday when his song was officially released to radio, so I'll continue hoping that number steadily climbs even without his presence on live TV this week.

There is one lesson I always hope young independent artists will have learned in advance from watching others: have a plan for what comes next. The TV/Internet exposure is going to give you an incredible boost of casual listeners, but are you prepared to capitalize? Do you have a release strategy?

A lot of times with these competitions (and national selections in general), the artist doesn't have control over the release date: the broadcaster releases all the songs to the public on the same day. In this case, Rai released the videos in one fell swoop, but the single release seemed to have been at the mercy of the artist/label/distributor. (I'm not trying to make another spreadsheet. Does "trust me, bro" work as a citation here instead? We'll come back to this.)

Eurovision songs can be released at any point after September 1 of the previous year. Without doing research (tell me if I'm wrong), Ladaniva's Jako was the earliest release of the 2024 batch, as the album containing it was released on September 29th, 2023. Some songs were released when the broadcaster made the announcement, others when the national final dropped all songs at once in advance of their show, and yet other broadcasters staggered the NF releases to match up with the song's debut in their preliminary rounds (i.e.. the worst release model). In these scenarios, there's not much the artist can do. It's only the internal selections that might have any say in the release date, by releasing their album on their own schedule, or perhaps negotiating with the broadcaster about the timing based on concert on-sales or other promotional events. Again, a lot of those internally selected artists also have label-support, which makes a massive difference when it comes to strategy and execution, even if label support isn't everything it used to be.

Every year I'm floored by how many Eurovision representatives don't have anything new to release by the end of May. This year, Marina Satti was prepared, dropping P.O.P. the week after Eurovision, striking while the iron was hot and Zari was fresh in the casual viewer's mind. One of my favorite acts from 2023, Portugal's Mimicat, didn't release an album until September of 2024, 16 months post-contest.

Contrast that with Aiko's April release of an absolute banger in Hunger a collaboration with Teya, that only disappointed in that it was 100% the qualifier that Pedestal deserved to be, and it didn't get the attention it should have received because the natural audience for such a collaboration was still in the pre-party throes. Timing can be everything. (I can write up a 20-point plan I'm willing to share with any indie-artists who are jumping into a National Final! How to succeed at Eurovision without the support of a major label!)

Sanremo Giovani seems not to have subscribed to any of these methods beyond the simultaneous video release of all songs. The songs hit streaming at random intervals. I found the partial playlist sometime before the first show on 11/12/2024, and then it was at least a week, before I realized the videos were available for all the songs, which completely upended my list of favorites.

Anyway, spreadsheet time:

Of the 6 artists in heat 1, only 3 had released their song to streaming before the show: Mazzariello, Synergy, and Tancredi all released on 11/8. Sidy, Mew and Angie all released after the show. Mazzariello, Tancredi, and Mew passed that week and have the highest streams for that group, but were Sidy and Angie impacted by their late release compared to the others? How many people have curate their own Sanremo Giovani playlist with only the songs that are still in the competition? (I'm asking because I often have this habit with ongoing National Finals. I haven't done it with Sanremo Giovani, because they've left too many of my favorites in the dust already.)

Anyway, the top 6 in streams are: Settembre with over 2 million, Alex Wyse and Tancredi both over 450k, Mazzariello with almost 400k, Mew just behind him with 367k and then Selmi with 117k with Angelica Bove in 7th with about 30k less streams, even though it was released on the same day.

Is it safe to assume these will be our top six? I would imagine it's in the producers' interest to keep these songs in the competition for another week, but there are some songs outside of that top 6 with a lot of star power behind them on the writing and production side. La nostra malinconia lists Davide Simonetta as a co-writer, and he's also penned Due Vite, Mon Amour, Bellissima, and Pazza musica and in other words, I didn't have a chance. There's a reason that song was one of my early favorites in the competition. (The languid live performance definitely took some of the shine off though.) Ditto with Madame co-writing Dimmi tu quando sei pronto per fare l'amore. I don't have a comprehensive list of which artists are signed to which labels and who remains unsigned, but based on the information I do have, I would expect our top six to come from these eight songs.

That said, here's my personal ranking of the remaining twelve songs (I don't need to remind you that Se fossi felice was my favorite of all 24 though, right? Right?):

1. Bosnia - Vengo dal Sud
2. Angelica Bove - La costra malinconia
3. Mew - Oh My God
4. Settembre - Vertebre
5. Tancredi - Standing Ovation
6. Arianna Rozzo - J'adore
7. Questo e Quello - Bella balla
8. Selmi - Forse per sempre
9. Val Lp e Lil Jolie - Dimmi tu quando sei pronto per fare l'amore
10. Mazzariello - Amarsi per lavoro
11. Alex Wyse - Rockstar
12. Grelmos - Flashback