Digital Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.
Download Singles Sales – Part 1
39/Smooth (1990) – 30,000 equivalent albums
Remaining tracks – 200,000
Kerplunk (1991) – 60,000 equivalent albums
Remaining tracks – 400,000
Dookie (1994) – 1,020,000 equivalent albums
Longview – 400,000
Welcome to Paradise – 600,000
Basket Case – 3,300,000
She – 300,000
When I Come Around – 1,600,000
Remaining tracks – 600,000
Insomniac (1995) – 120,000 equivalent albums
Brain Stew – 400,000
Remaining tracks – 400,000
If some still doubt the monster status of Dookie among Green Day‘s earlier albums, here are some more figures establishing its status. Tracks from 39/Smooth, Kerplunk and Insomniac haven’t sold much in download singles format, with sales standing at just 1,4 million. However, it’s a totally different story for hits from Dookie which combine for 6,8 million units sold. The biggest song from the album is easily Basket Case which is responsible for nearly half of that total.
Hoping to see an update of what Revolution Radio ended up at and how Father Of All has performed with it being out for 6 months now. Great article!
Japan – 725,000
Seems odd considering the album is only certified Platinum* (200,000).
*https://www.riaj.or.jp/f/data/cert/gd_search.html
Hi Christoffer!
RIAJ certs are very, very rarely updated. Dookie has been a tremendous catalog seller for many years. Even albums like Insomniac, Nimrod and Warning sold well over 200,000 units in Japan.
Dookie went Platinum there one year before reaching it in the UK for example. Since then it is well over 3xP in the latter country. The situation is the same virtually everywhere outside of North America!
Thanks for the answer. Keep up the good work!
[…] CSPC: Green Day Popularity Analysis, ChartMasters, [website], 11 March 2017, https://chartmasters.org/2017/03/cspc-green-day-popularity-analysis/6/, (accessed 28 August […]
So any update as of December 2018?
I’d like an update to see how Revolution Radio is doing. The spotify streams for those songs seem to be quite a bit higher now than they were on Page 26.
The album has also been certified Gold in the UK indicating 100k+ so I’d assume it sold a good bit more worldwide. It’s probably reached the 1 million milestone by now. I hope in the future it surpasses Uno! at least.
Hello it’s now November 20, 2017.
Any chance of an update on Revolution Radio ?
These rankings are simply amazing! Thanks for all the work! I just discovered your page and can’t stop reading. I’m a big fan!
Thanks for the nice words Tomasz! Hope you will get enjoying upcoming publications 😉
Great work MJD, Anthony and Hernan! Green Day is an interesting case to read and study! Starting so slow, they became so massive with Dookie! The following 3 albums did well, and then they became massive again with American Idiot! I have to say, while Dookie is more successful, I consider American Idiot as their most impressive album in their catalog in terms of success, because they achieved it so deep into their career, and that that album is their only one that spawned numerous sizable hits! Regarding American Idiot, could you tell me whether it is the best selling… Read more »
Hi Raffi! Very precise and detailed views as usual! Thanks for your continuous suggestions which are really helpful 🙂 About Green Day physical singles sales, you need to consider none of their hits got released in the US. They were also not popular during the 90s in France, a huge market for that format. This limits a lot their potential of sales on this category. About Asian sales, at least for big 90s pop stars this can be done as we do have such information. For most other artists sadly the info about continental Asian sales are just too disparate… Read more »
What some users Wants? Is that perhaps a reference to Christina Aguilera?😉 If so, pretty excited for it! Been dying to know whether her debut or Stripped was the more successful album, and how she compared with her peers
It could be a “I Know What You Want” reference as well haha
Only a few days left to see if one of you is correct 😉
@Raffi,
In the middle of such a message I was sure I missed one question! About the biggest album from 2004, yes I fully expect American Idiot to be the one as Confessions would most likely fall below in a CSPC logic!
You know I think ‘American Idiot’ is a masterpiece and it was also the last REAL hit rock album ever. How many other rock albums have surpassed 10 million copies since then? It was original as well, combining punk rock into a rock opera, like the Sex Pistols meets ‘Tommy’ by The Who with a bit of mid 70’s Queen thrown in. Its also a massive hit with the streaming, more so than ‘Dookie’. American Idiot has 593,769,585 streams as of today, where as Dookie has 447,417,471. Also if you look at Green day’s top 10 songs on Youtube, you’ll… Read more »
Hi ND!
Only one rock album sold over 10m afterwards that I can think of – Nickelback’s ATRR. American Idiot is clearly underrated among classic rock fans but people under 40 give it a lot of credit, I can also see this album continue its climb impressively in the future!
Grat work as always!
But i pointed out that Green Days numbers at the ranking on the last page are missing.
Hi Al,
Thanks for noticing! It is now added 🙂