Fifty Shades of Grey helps to shape the music charts

Fifty Shades of Grey, the erotic novel written by E.L. James, has been making plenty of headlines in recent weeks, soaring to the top of the bestseller lists in the UK and elsewhere.
But it’s not just in a literary context that the book has succeeded in capturing the imagination of consumers.
The Tallis Scholars’s recording of ‘Spem in alium’ has, in fact, made its way up the charts at a startling pace since featuring in the popular novel.
The piece of classical music has made its way all the way up to number seven in the UK Classical Singles Chart, with sales of the song being driven by the popularity of the raunchy novel.
Peter Phillips, the founder and director of the Tallis Scholars, commented: “I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey but I am most grateful to the author for introducing so many new listeners to the musical sensation that is Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium.”
Written during the reign of Elizabeth I, the song features 40 individualvoices, with everyone singing in Latin.
Over one million copies of Fifty Shades of Grey have been have been downloaded on the Amazon Kindle, thereby making it the fastest novel to sell one million copies.
And many of these consumers have subsequently downloaded the song from the Apple iTunes store, leading it to go from number 20 in the charts to number seven.
The series of books – which also includes Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed – have already sold around 20 million copies worldwide.
Sales of the book have been driven, to some extent, by the power of social media, with internet-savvy book lovers recommending the series to their friends online.
And even though critical reaction to the book has been somewhat mixed, it has already become the fastest-selling paperback of all time, outselling the Harry Potter series in the process.