ROSTERWATCH 2006: Companies bear fruit from mainstream appeal.

Commercial signings led the way, says Stuart Clark, who presents MW's Rosterwatch - the annual listing of the new acts signed by the UK's key labels and publishers over the past 12 months

Approximately 180 artists were signed to key UK record labels in 2005. Of those, nine made it into the top 30 best-selling albums of the year: the Arctic Monkeys, The Kooks, Corinne Bailey Rae, James Morrison, Lily Allen, The Feeling, Gnarls Barkley, Shayne Ward and Paolo Nutini.

What the above artists share is a common audience - an album buyer, typically aged 25 years and over, a reflection of a year that, from a sales perspective at least, has been shaped by an increasingly mainstream appetite at commercial radio.

Warner/Chappell managing director Richard Manners, who in the past year has enjoyed success from 2005 signings including Nutini, Hot Chip and Muse, says the past two years have seen a trend towards increasingly safe, very commercial artists.

"I think radio has shown a real appetite for very commercial pop songs, from acts that have developed and can deliver live," he says. "Whether it was The Feeling or Paolo [Nutini] or even James Morrison, what these artists share is the ability to produce a very radio-friendly pop song and, judging by a lot of artists that are shaping up for next year, that's going to continue."

Testament to Manners' predictions, two of the frontrunners tipped for success in 2007 - the as-yet-unsigned Remi Nicole and Island's Mika - share a very straight mainstream appeal. They are also reflective of many of the year's more sought-after signings, which have included a slew of commercial pop-rock acts: Ghosts, Switches and The Hoosiers, and many solo female artists, such as Adele (XL), Amy Macdonald (Mercury), Terra Naomi, Duffy, Kate Nash and Laura Marling (Virgin).

2006 was not without a few curveballs, however. This time last year, few could have predicted that a then little-known band called Enter Shikari would be sitting on one of the most anticipated albums ...