CSPC: U2 Popularity Analysis

Streaming Sales

Below table lists Spotify streaming of all songs from the albums we are studying. The Comprehensive Streaming is reached by multiplying Spotify figures by 68/26. In fact, as shown in IFPI 2015 Report, there were 68 million paying subscribers to all streaming platforms by the end of 2015. While the exact count of Spotify paying subscribers by the end of 2015 is unknown, that figure reached 20 million in June 2015 and 30 million in March 2016, thus an estimated 26 million is used as of the end of 2015.

The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as it is now the norm in the new industry model.

Streaming Part 1 – Early albums

The band’s first two albums failed to truly put them on the map in a worldwide scale, but they were still starting to make some noise here and there. Of course, they continued to generate sales in subsequent years while they got even bigger.