Milo Greene won big on Twitter after taking late-night TBS viewers back to “1957.”
The California quintet made its second-ever late-night talk show appearance last Thursday on the Conan O’Brien show, and it seems people noticed. After performing the lead single from their eponymous debut album, viewers took to the web in a frenzy to hear more from the up-and-coming folk harmonizers.
While Milo’s social numbers were up across the board following the appearance, it was a massive increase in Twitter followers that caught our attention. Compared to the week before the performance, their count surged by close to 7000 percent, adding 4.3 thousand followers – close to their total pre-Conan.
After opening on an extensive fall tour with the Civil Wars last year and then taking to their own smaller headlining gigs earlier this year, Milo Greene released its debut album on July 17th with initial buzz that would help the band land a top spot on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, as well as invitations to appear on several late-night talk shows.
The successful Conan appearance comes with an interesting juxtaposition - the band’s July 25th Letterman performance. A week after releasing their album the fivesome performed on David Letterman and the response was lackluster. Once again focusing on Twitter, in the week following the performance the band added less than 200 followers, dropping from 362 the week before.
It’s tough to say why, but with the second appearance Milo Greene scored big. The different air times could have had an impact. Both are late night, but O’Brien’s show is on 35 minutes before Letterman. The previous exposure may have made the audience more susceptible to their sound, or maybe they played better on one show than the other? Perhaps it is as simple as Conan’s audience finding the band more likeable?
No matter the reason, in this case the second try was a charm. And now with thousands more fans behind them thanks to their exposure on basic cable, Milo Greene will embark on a headlining tour this fall, making stops across North America.
Photo Credit: Screen Grab Conan O’Brien TBS
Billy Mitchell is the Data Journalism Intern with music analytics company Next Big Sound. Mitchell is currently a graduate student at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute focusing on magazine writing. Before joining the Next Big Sound team, the Newport News, VA native worked with CMJ and Rolling Stone.
