Within’ a few weeks Celine Dion will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of her debut album. So deep into a career, the norm is to exploit the existing catalog. The Quebec superstar is still building it yet, as her recent Encore Un Soir French album is destroying the competition.
Many things happened in-between. The Eurovision Song Contest, the Soundtrack of Titanic movie, record breaking sellers in French speaking countries, child’s, worldwide smashes during the 90s, giant tours, unmatched Las Vegas residencies, Christmas records, Japanese mania and, more recently, the sad passing of her long-time manager and husband, René Angelil. The point that never changed is that she never stopped moving records.
If her life has been very rich, the specificity of Celine Dion catalog is the fact it contains three rather than one discography. Two of them are easily identifiable, being her English-albums list since Unison in 1990 and her adult French-albums starting by Dion Chante Plamandon in 1991. The third one is made of her earlier material issued from 1981 to 1987, mostly released in Quebec. That discography which features albums like La Voix Du Bon Dieu and Tellement J’Ai D’Amour has been extensively repackaged after the singer made it big. As the originals have been out of print for very long and never released in many countries, I’m going to encapsulate all those records and relative compilations into a single album, Early Material Album. Her remaining albums will be treated the same way as for other artists.
As a reminder for users who are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea you do not need to worry, it is quite simple since it only consists in merging every format sales an artist has been getting and attributing them to respective studio albums. We will start by focusing on raw data, setting how much each Celine Dion album sold. Then, we will check sales of each track from those albums on each format – physical, digital and streaming – and weight them to value those figures on a par with album sales. To complete the study, we will analyze sales of all remaining LPs she released, compilations, live albums and music videos. Once all the raw data is set, we will only need to apply appropriate weighting to get the overall picture of the cult diva career results.
Let’s go!
Hi everyone! I reversed MJD’s formulas to determine the CSP for each track. We could interpret this as the CSP total “due to” a track, so its success. I have calculated the top 10 below (All songs): Song [Album] = CSP total (millions sales equivalent) My Heart Will Go On [Let’s Talk About Love] = 36,37 Because You Loved Me [Falling Into You] = 16,18 The Power of Love [The Colour Of My Love] = 13,01 It’s All Coming Back to Me Now [Falling Into You] = 12,21 Beauty and the Beast [Celine Dion] = 6,70 All by Myself [Falling… Read more »
wow wonderful Tony i look forward to seeing the changes in that list when other big songs by big artists are added!
Hello Pat200! Here is the top 20 “French songs”: 1 1995 Pour que tu m’aimes encore [D’Eux] – 5,900,000 2 1998 On ne change pas [S’Il Suffisait D’Aimer] – 2,300,000 3 1995 J’irai où tu iras [D’Eux] – 1,820,000 4 1998 S’il suffisait d’aimer [S’Il Suffisait D’Aimer] – 1,350,000 5 1995 Je sais pas [D’Eux] – 1,210,000 6 1991 Un garçon pas comme les autres (Ziggy) [Dion Chante Plamondon] – 850,000 7 1982 D’Amour Ou D’Amitié [Early Material Albums] – 680,000 7 1991 L’amour existe encore [Dion Chante Plamondon] – 680,000 9 1995 Destin [D’Eux] – 650,000 10 2003 Tout… Read more »
wow! thx a lot Anthony!
One more tiny question:
Hasn’t her live-album “Live A Paris” been officially certified 2xPlatinum in Europe (IFPI European Platinum Awards) for shipments of 2 million?
I was a little confused when I saw your worldwide figure of only 1,8 million?
The same should apply to “A L’Olympia”, which is also certified 1xPlatinum for European shipments of 1 million, but you still give a figure of only 800,000 ww.
Thanks as always!
Your Luminator!
Hello Luminator! As you can imagine I’m fully aware of those awards. Both of those awards, especially by the time they were attributed, are completely impossible to validate as per official data from European countries. It is unclear as to why Sony Music went after those awards, if they included a free album on tour tickets or if they added various exports and music video sales to their report. Both certifications happened in early 2004, I happened to speak with the person that requested all three Jean-Jacques Goldman certifications received in 2003, from Sony Music too. At the time, I… Read more »
thanks to you dear MJD, are curious about the CSPC analysis of all the artists that I mentioned to you and Hernan in yesterday’s messages, but I would be happy if next week you could analyze the solo career of Paul McCartney and The Beatles (the Fab Four). I’d be very grateful !!!
Hello MJD congratulations again for the website, yesterday I complimented with Hernàn, you are fantastic, it’s nice to see that analyzed in detail so many artists, yesterday I suggested in my earlier comments many artists and groups that you could analyze, now I’d love to know CSPC analysis of groups like the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Queen, Eagles, AC/DC and Aerosmith.
I hope you will answer me soon !!
Hi Anthony,
Thanks for your nice words! I have read your messages on Hernàn article, definitely an extensive list hehe. I’m myself interested in all those artists and while that will require a lot of time, we will be doing our best to cover all of them!
Amazing as always. I really like your analysis on Madonna and Celine.
Excellent!!!!
fantastic job. a bit surprised you downgraded both her 2 big albums to below 30 million, and you didn’t add the sales generated by MHWGO from the OST to her sales. even though you give your reasons for it, i think they needed to be credited to her as it is her vocals on. if you were to do so, how many millions would be added to her sales?
Hi Pat! Of course she performs vocals of the single, but she still contributes to only 1 song out of 15. In everything, there is always two ways to look at things – the technical way and the functional way. Technically, Celine Dion is clearly not the author of the Soundtrack, so that must be excluded. The debate is in the functional way, as one may feel she contributed a lot to it. The real question yet isn’t how many sales MHWGO generated for the Soundtrack, but how many copies LTAL / Titanic would have sold without the smash of… Read more »
very interesting analysis. so basically for madonna in evita, who’s that girl, and i’m breathless or whitney in the bodyguard, preacher’s wife and waiting to exhale, they get all the album sales even if not all songs are theirs, but because they were the main reason behind the album selling basically (and they starred in the movie). can’t wait for mariah and whitney as well as barbra and see how much these 3 epic artists have sold as well. and i can’t wait for MJ, Beatles, Elvis and all the artists that have CSPC sales of an album that is… Read more »
Note: please read my post slowly cos I’m not mad. 🙂 A soundtrack album is a soundtrack album. People buy it because they love the movie. Whitney never sold more than 30 million copies for one album. And same with Madonna’s Evita, why credit the album sales to them when the album was made for the movie and not for them, which explains why not all of the tracks in the soundtrack album are theirs? Second, do you think the Titanic soundtrack album will sell more than 30 million copies if “MHWGO” wasn’t in it but was just in Celine… Read more »
Hello RLAAMJR! I’m sorry but I have to deeply disagree on everything you post as you are clever mixing very different things. When Random Access Memories sells well, nobody claim sales should be attributed to Pharrell Williams, because it is a Daft Punk project. There is no Daft Punk vocals, but Get Lucky was their song just like the album is their album. In the same way, when Crisis sells a lot of copies in 1983, sales go to Mike Oldfield, since it was his project, his album, that Maggie Reilly sings vocals on Moonlight Shadow doesn’t provide her album… Read more »
Now that you are writing about equivalent album sales, you can’t ignore that “My Heart Will Go On” sold 30 million copies on the Titanic soundtracks. The soundtrack was promoted by “My Heart Will Go On”. It was the only track you heard on the radio, that won awards, that was performed on TV. The same for Beauty And The Beast, Sleepless in Seattle, Up Close And Personal and many other soundtracks. Also, you can’t ignore the VH1 Divas 1998, VH1 Divas 2002 or albums like God Bless America or America: A Tribute To Heros. You are doing an incomplete… Read more »
Hello Bjs, We speak about equivalent album sales of the artist, not equivalent album sales of albums from others. Rather than getting into arguments, I’ll just ask you two questions that will point out how wrong your logic is. 1) Do you think Eminem, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Drake, David Guetta, T.I., Maroon 5, Shakira, Nicki Minaj or Calvin Harris album sales must be added to Rihanna results? 2) Do you think a few million sales from Let’s Talk About Love must be removed from Celine Dion and attributed to Barbra Streisand and the Bee Gees? Or half D’Eux sales being… Read more »
Think about “Tell Him”. What do you do with the single sales and the streams? Don’t you count it for Celine’s and Barbra’s total? Let’s say the single sold 1,5 million. You add 1,5 million to Celine Dion and 1,5 million to Barbra Streisand right? You don’t count 0,75m for Celine and 0,75m for Barbra. Over 100 million tracks of “My Heart Will Go On” were sold wordwide and you just ignore 30 million from the Titanic soundtracks. Look at Celine’s top 25 songs on itunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/celine-dion/id63729 You have The Prayer at #2 (track from the Andrea Bocelli album) and… Read more »
Hi Bjs, Once again you are completely missing the credits concept. The logic is quite simple, Tell Him is a song by Barbra and Celine, so it’s normal they both get its sales. Let’s Talk About Love is NOT a Barbra album, so it’s normal she gets 0 sale from it. When people went pick LTAL, they went to buy a Celine album, not a Barbra album. In the same way, God Bless America is a Celine song, so it’s normal to assign her it’s sales. A various artists compilation containing it is NOT a Celine album, so it’s normal… Read more »
MJD’s reasoning makes sense.
as for the 100 million MHWGO tracks sold on multiple releases, it becomes unimaginable work and illogical to attribute the sales that did not come from her single or LTAL album. imagine doing that for every artist, it would take a few months to analyze each artist and see all the albums they are featured on lol.
In order for a soundtrack to be owned by an artist they have to contribute 60% of the material to that album. In the example of Madonna where did 6 songs and helped to produce and write some of them too, she contributed to the majority of the album. Celine lending her vocals to 1 track doesn’t suffice her owning the soundtrack. Also, the movie broke blockbuster numbers and helped Celine more than vice versa.
As for your post”Just imagine a second the movie would have bombed”, what about Avatar? but I See You is not even a hit, or gone with the wind, which song isbits theme song? And in the Billboard Music Awards ceremey of 1997, they award Album of Year for the soundtrack to celine
Hello MJD! Such a great work for only one artist, it is a colossal job to study all the big selling artists, especially the oldest! 1. Did Céline was the biggest act in the 90’s? Her sales were incredible! 2. I think that there is a typo in page 15: it is written that French sales for “Dion Chante Plamondon” are 145k, and 645k for UK. I think it is the opposite? If I am right, maybe European and worlwide total are wrong. 3. I know approximately how you estimate album sales (using certifications, soundscan, other reliable sources…). Is it… Read more »
Hi Tony! 1) If I have to answer within’ three letters, I would say yes. 2) Thanks for noticing, it is now fixed! The 145k figure relates to nothing, it is an uncleared copy/paste. The 645k figure is indeed sales of the album in France! 3) Yes. Unlike albums, singles sell the huge majority of their copies during the chart run, in a wake-like format, which make it rather easy to calculate using cleverly put formulas. I do use such calculations extensively for single sales in countries like France or Germany. 4) It really depends on the artist available data.… Read more »
Thank you very much for all these answers it is very appreciated!
I am not an expert to analyse data, so my contribution to make a CSPC analysis by myself is, for the moment, not conceivable…
But I can help in another way. For example, you could tell me each artist you want to study, and then I send you all the streaming data (album, track, total stream). It is not a lot of thing but it is easy to do and can “save your time” for the real analysis.
Tony
That’s very nice from you to be ready to provide some of your time to contribute! You haven’t set an email here, but feel free to send me a PM on Facebook / Twitter that we can discuss and that I can send you the templates I use to fullfil! 🙂
You’re welcome!
Here is my email address: anthony071@hotmail.fr
I’m from France, so feel free to speak me in French in our future email discussions 😉
Great！！！Guillaume, you are bad!bad!
Thanks again for your great work. I have a few things to comment on though: 1.) I think that you did not acknowledge the huge success that both Falling Into You and Let’s Talk About Love (+All The Way) achieved in Asia. Both albums, for example, exceed half a million copies in obscure markets like Taiwan (650k for FIY, 500k+ for LTAL). For the rest of Southeast Asia, we do have little information, but when that rare information is available – as for the Malaysian chart posted in the Billboard magazine – it shows that her albums were absolute top… Read more »
Hello Luminator! I’ll be adding more detailed information tonight when I have all my files available but here is a first batch of answers, hope this helps! 1) Taiwan is a bit specific since the Titanic became by very far the biggest selling foreign album there, sending her catalog sales through the roof during the period. Still, Celine Dion was a very solid seller all over Asia, it is just that we tend to overestimate this continent market. Falling Into You was up to 1,213,000 units sold in the eight main Asian (minus Japan) markets by December 1996, when it… Read more »
That was indeed very insightful. Thank you so much. I have one regard on the situation in Taiwan though: Her boom there didn’t come about with Titanic, but with her tour in early 1997: Please compare the chartrun of Falling Into You: Falling Into You (#1(15)/40w) (11/08/1996): 8-8-6-8-7-5-6-5-6-4-6-6-7-6 (Re 24/11/1996): 10 (Re 26/01/1997): 4-*1*-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-4-5-6-7-7-9 (Re 20/07/1997): 8-8-8 The album had sold 176,800 (3xP= 150.000) as of December 1996 and then it exploded in early 1997 and sold up to 633,518 (12xP= 600.000) until November 1997. I asked myself if this explosion was exclusive to Taiwan or whether it also affected… Read more »
Hi again! Sales of LTAL make it rather clear that it was limited to Taiwan. If by Dec 96 sales of FIY in Taiwan were on par with other big Asian countries and even quite lower than in Korea, by April 98 LTAL was closing in 450k in Taiwan while being around 200k in all other notable Asian countries, illustrating how specific of a case it was. During the Titanic era she was just out of this world there, with LTAL and the Soundtrack combining for 1,5 million in the country! The FIY tour only went in Japan for a… Read more »
LTAL shipped 500k by Oct. 24th, 1998. How many copies has it sold up to date in Taiwan? The same with Music Box since it shipped 500k while being 8xP in US and 24 million.
Hi dhhd! Wel, basically not much. For 4 main reasons. 1) It’s important to understand shipments in countries with less culture variety than the US (more on that later about Canada and your comment related to Britney) is that shipments happen faster. When the target audience is well defined, it’s easier to ship large numbers. In the US, there is very different areas. You can hit big a certain part of the population today, another in 3 months, and never be successful among another one. In a country like Taiwan, it’s hit or miss, everything happens very fast. 2) The… Read more »
Hi, MJD so, what’s your eventual estimate for MB and LTAL in Taiwan considering tiny catalog sales? And BTW, we already have figures for 5 MJ’s albums by June 2009. Considering MJ’s catalog sales getting huge since his death, what’s your eventual estimate for those 5 albums in Taiwan? And how many estimated copies has MJ sold in Taiwan in total based on known information? MB sold 1.6 million in Southeast Asia(main 8 markets?) including 600k in SK and 320k in Taiwan.Considering catalog sales, it seems like 1.6/2*3≈2.4+million in total. But it didn’t include countries like China & India. It… Read more »
Hi dhhd! It takes really a lot of time to get into all the details needed to set up new estimates, I always avoid doing that in comments elseway I have really no more time for new articles. Some general remarks through: 1) catalog sales in ‘small’ markets are of different nature than catalog sales in the US for example. The US is such a big market/country, that sales are very consistent through years. In small markets, it isn’t worth it to keep import old records at retail to sell a few copies per year. So their catalog sales are… Read more »
Does continental Europe mean total Europe sales or total Europe sales without UK?
Hi djdj! It’s total Europe sales 🙂
http://web.archive.org/web/19991118184023fw_/http://www.sonymusic.com.tw:80/intl/cdion/album.shtml
According to Sony Music Taiwan back in 2000 ( from Wayback Magazine), The Colour Of My Love sold 4 million in US and 18 million copies worldwide.I think the label inflation was not that much back in 2000,not like nowadays.
Hi dhhd,
There is easily enough information to know this is 100% incorrect, onyl goes on we shouldn’t blindly accept these figures printed here and there.
Hi again,
Here comes the breakdown of All The Way!
America
– US – 9,300,000
– Canada – 1,400,000
– Argentina – 120,000
– Brazil – 525,000
Asia
– Japan – 2,100,000
Oceania
– Australia – 325,000
– New Zealand – 100,000
Europe – 5,980,000
– UK – 1,350,000
– France – 775,000
– Germany – 1,250,000
– Italy – 400,000
– Spain – 275,000
– Sweden – 200,000
– Netherland – 250,000
– Switzerland – 200,000
– Austria – 100,000
– Finland – 56,000
World – 22,900,000
Wow. She sold 22 million with all the way. It means shes the only female artist with 3, 20 million + album sales right?
Hi Janet,
Well no, Madonna did it too with The Immaculate Collection, True Blue and Like A Virgin. Then Whitney has a word to say there as well with the Bodyguard and Whitney Houston easily over 20 million and Whitney on 19,8 million.
Wow! Fantastic! I would like to see a total equivalent albums comparison between Céline, Mariah and Whitney to see who’s #2, #3 and #4 in the female category!
Your curiosity is answered.
#2 Is Celine Dion
#3 Is Mariah Carey
#4 Is Whitney Houston
How many albums has Celine sold in Asia?
16,000,000?