Mercury Prize increase of their album "The Seldom Seen Kid" after winning the Prize in 2008. In their winner's speech, Elbow's frontman Guy Garvey said that winning the Mercury Prize was 'Quite literally the best thing that has ever happened to us'. Similarly, sales of The xx's winning album rose by 450% the day after they won the 2010 Mercury Prize and 2013 winner James Blake saw a 2,500% sales increase on Amazon after he was announced as the winner of the 2013 Mercury Prize. 2011 winner PJ Harvey's album "Let England Shake" jumped from number 181 to 24 in the UK
Mercury Prize Prize's organisers of "banning" the band's self-released album, "m b v", from the shortlist nominations and addressing the nomination criteria, which he claimed branded the album "virtually illegal". It has also been noted that heavy metal has been overlooked by the prize. A 2013 article by "Vice" on the Mercury Prize said "Metal certainly never gets a look-in, not even on the official entry information form: 'The Prize is open to all types of music, including pop, rock, folk, urban, dance, jazz, blues, electronica, classical…'" The only metal record that has ever been nominated for the Mercury Prize is "Troublegum"