I) The Problem
A) Wrong estimates / Erroneous data
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles sold more than 5 million units in the UK. It all started with the 4,811,996 sales claim made by the OCC on their all-time Top 100 published in November 2006. From the very first day, various chart followers including myself seriously questioned this figure. It has been agreed for a long time that it is a wrong one, inflated by a good 2 million. Yet, in an attempt to maintain their credibility, the OCC has been continuing to go by that figure, strongly refusing to question the said claim and instead adding new sales to that flawed total. It is just one example among many others.
After a decade of claims without a single fix, their all-time lists ended up being hugely corrupted. With the BPI automatically certifying records on the back of OCC figures, the historical source for fixing erroneous figures is now corrupted as well.
We all make mistakes, myself included. It isn’t that much of an issue – continuing to state an error as a fact is though. That’s why we aren’t going to do that. We will be highlighting and fixing our own errors rather than hiding them.
Things are still getting worst in the OCC side though…
The videos that have been released in the last two decades (2010 ‘- 2020’s) cannot be compared with videos released in previous decades (2000’s, 90’s, 80’s …) because a video released in 2003 its current views do not reflect the impact it had at the time. Is there a formula to adjust that difference? I say this because in the film industry there are already several films from the decades of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s … adjusted to the current economy, and they can compete with more recent films
I think YT numbers compensate for that already, given the higher sales of the original products in the time before YT.
The entire point of CSPC is to reflect how songs, albums, and artists popularity and success have evolved as they progressed through their careers and through different formats. Keyword being different formats. Weighing YouTube views differently entirely defeats this purpose, and imo is unnecessary
I understand that the success of a single is focused on the compilation of its sales in its different formats (physical sales, digital downloads, Transmission…) especially if they are singles from past decades. But I am not talking about the audios but about their videos only. VH1 and MTV were the big broadcasters and distributors of music videos. And they were a reference before the arrival of YouTube. Many videos were very successful on those channels (videos from the 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s). What I want to know, is there a formula to incorporate the success of the videos broadcast… Read more »
Isn’t that the same as incorporating audio streams with airplay charts?
Exactly, and Youtube views aren’t that big a deal anyway since 1 billion views = 85k album sales (from what I understand).
by this logic that you’re using, we should do the same to pure sales and adjust the difference since smash albums like 1989 or x by ed sheeran that sold 8-10m would definitely sell 20m-30m pure if released in the 80s, 90s or early 00s
Hello, when you calculate the loss of album sales 2004-2006 in order to measure digital sales, shouldn’t the loss of physical single sales also be counted?
hello where do i get “Comprehensive Audio Stream”
Hi MJD, I have a question, The “Comprehensive Audio Stream” includes Spotify??
[…] The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 157 million of the 272 million users of streaming platforms, […]
Shouldn’t streams for older songs be worth more than streams for newer ones tho?
At this point Ed Sheeran will probably pass MJ with CSPC
Just like how tour grosses are adjusted for inflation?
Hi snsd!
That doesn’t make sense really. Streams are weighted to be as worthy as albums, the point is not to get a linear market through time: sales themselves strongly evolved through the years!
Hello! Any news on Streaming formula (Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = 272/157* Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750)? Infos about size markets of Japan, China, Korea (and others out Spotify)?
Hi Luca! We should definitely update the article with the last formula. I’m still holding it off for now since I haven’t got time to take a few examples and check how new streaming formula balances out with SK downloads. The latter have been used since a few years to account for Asian popularity of international artists, now that we already reflect it thanks to streaming numbers of local platforms we feel like double-counting it. We may discontinue the accounting of these downloads from a certain date, likely end of 2017, but I need to put figures on a spread… Read more »