The Queen of Pop. Madonna is widely recognized as the biggest female star of all-time. As you know if you have been following Chartmasters.org for long, we created the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to validate or not those assumptions.
Applying it to historical albums and young popular artists helped us to understand that album sales aren’t the only valid indicator of popularity both because of the impact of various compilations and of large singles sales. Some artists have been able to pull great numbers in all fronts.
One perfect example appears to be Madonna. Consequently, it is time to apply this concept on this case which involves both situations combined to see how much it impacts our perception of each album popularity.
In fact, the American superstar had strong singles sales all over her career as well as notorious compilations downgrading a lot catalog results of her original albums.
No one can seriously doubt Madonna‘s popularity, just like no one can seriously argue against the fact she is the best selling female artist of all-time. One ranking on which she is often overshadowed by several of her peers yet is the best selling studio album by a female artist.
Incredibly enough, Whitney Houston, Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette, Celine Dion, Adele, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Norah Jones and soon both Tracy Chapman and Carole King all have at least one studio album that outsold every Madonna‘s studio set. The latter biggest seller, True Blue, ends up being pushed out of the all-time Top 10 female studio albums.
While an unexperienced eye would conclude that Madonna never really had a true massive hit album, others will notice most of those female artists had one standout album that was well other the par inside their own discography. This situation is clearly favorable to the one-off record that keeps getting enduring catalog appeal – which is precisely why Tracy Chapman and Carole King blockbusters are now passing by True Blue – while the extensive career of Madonna makes compilations more relevant to the casual buyer.
Indeed, the singer outsold all other previously mentioned females minus Celine Dion by over 2 to 1 in terms of compilation sales. No need to say she also outsold all those females in terms of physical singles sales by a considerable margin.
Considering this context, merging results of all her records ends up being absolutely necessary to properly define how successful – or unsuccessful! – her albums have been. If there is little doubt that True Blue would appear into a Top 10 most successful, in opposition to best selling, female studio albums list it is interesting to know how high it would be and if additional Madonna‘s albums can climb into those high waters as well.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Madonna‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
Let’s go!
OMG, what a wonderful work we have here. I just discover this site and a just need to congratulate you for this iniciative. It’a amazing to see how sales are distributed in each album… And what I loved the most is that you use more realistic numbers than what we usually see on internet. Some fans are delusional and create numbers out of nowhere. LOL
I’m really excited for your future analysis. Hope you got to Michael, I’d love to see how his monster sales would be distribuited into your sistem (CSPC).
Where’s Michael Jackson CSPC analysis?
Hi MJD, thanks for the update! I noticed you included both “American Pie” and “Die Another Day” in the orphan category, in terms of physical and digital sales, but you did include them among tracks of their respective albums when it comes to Streaming. As “Into the Groove”, they were exlcuded from the album tracklist in the US only, so I think their sales should be included in the CSPC totals of their respective albums (just like you did with “Into the Groove”). Her straeaming numbers are certainly unimpressive… Concerning video streamings, it has to be said that the absence… Read more »
Hi Nicolò! About songs of Soundtracks, they are distinct cases. The song Into The Groove appeared on the movie Desperately Seeking Susan, but it wasn’t part of its Soundtrack, so it really was a song of True Blue in first place. In the other side, Die Another Day and American Pie promoted first external products, so I can’t assign the CD singles to the original era. For streams, as they started years later, what matters is the track list of the CD rather than which record was first promoted, so there indeed I include those two songs into her studio… Read more »
Is Cher coming soon?
Hi Chrysalynne Lingling!
Hernan and Anthony, on physical singles and streams, already completed their parts on Cher! I’m the one being late there due to very limited available time in recent weeks. I’ll be working on her discography in full charge from now!
Good evening dear MJD, with the new methods I’m noticing that many artists lose about 2 to 3 million equivalent albums as in the case of Madonna, this fact will also happen for artists that you have already analyzed such for example U2 or The Beatles ?
equivalent album sales
Hi Pelvis,
It really depends on the artist. Madonna sold bucketloads of physical singles in the period that had formulas inflating numbers, she suffered from that. U2 will too but on a lower scale since they sold less singles.
The Beatles were studied after several method changes and singles from the 60s remained unaltered.
Is Michael coming anytime soon?
Any plans on doing the CSPC for Phil Collins? He sold a shitload of records!
The Queen of Pop needs her Kings.
We wait the CSPC for ELVIS PRESLEY and MICHAEL JACKSON.
Please please please 😀
It would be interesting to know who are the worst-selling music artists of all time? 🙂 🙂
Good analysis. Still hope to see someday – Queen, Michael Jackson and Elvis. AC/DC could also be great.