It has been over 2 years since I introduced to you the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept, nicknamed CSPC, in March 2016. This revolutionary concept enables to define accurately the most successful artists ever. During this timeframe I, with the precious help of Hernan Lopez and Anthony Blanchard, studied nearly 100 artists, 1,000 albums plus countless singles and stand-alone tracks worth a gigantic 8,5 billion equivalent album sales combined!
Many of you praised the effort and the ongoing results which really makes us feel great about the website. One recurrent negative feedback though has been the difficulty to navigate the blog. One unique, cross-artist source of data was needed. While I can advise you to use the search function at the top-right, which works really well, an article grouping together the main data is definitely a positive improvement. So, here it is, please say hi to the Data Collector!
This article lists various rankings, with more added frequently, please see the summary on page 2. Top selling singles / albums / artists, per format, per year, per artist type, etc… everything is possible!
Thanks to this Data Collector it isn’t necessary anymore to repeat the comprehensive rankings at the end of each article. It will solve an issue by removing some pages and letting you reach always the same final pages for all acts – CSPC totals, the artist’s singles ranking and their records & achievements. This article will be kept updated which will also prevent us from having lists updated at different moments here and there.
Anthony will handle the updates of this thread from now on and try to answer your questions the best he can. We won’t be answering to lists requests on comments though as it will be impossible to maintain them. Instead, when you request something, and if it is relevant for many people, we will add a page to the article with the said list.
does anyone have any estimates on the sales of Al Green specifically his Let’s Stay Together album, because I can’t find anything on his sales
Is there any strong possibility that Britney can go higher up the ranking? 😁😁. I feel like she might have a chance to pass George Michael, The Doors, Paul Mccartney and maybe Dire Straights too. Shes still kinda young and a comeback is not impossible.
No chance for her I am afraid. She’s 40 and her last 2 albums flopped hard.
I mean the possibility is always there but right now it doesn’t look like she will ever come back. Not anytime soon at least. :/
If the rate at which she is currently out streaming them, stays relatively the same, she will eventually.
I think the one thing that would drastically change all that, would be McCartneys death.
But by the time she beats them
taylor, Rihanna, Coldplay, drake, Adele would’ve beaten her and she’d be back where she started
Of course and I’d imagine that will happen before she catches even George, I was just commenting on her catching them. Even then, she’s still got a long way to go, to catch the majority of those four, especially The Doors.
On top of that, there are still a few acts to be studied, that could enter above her and push her down even further.
which acts left to be studied will probably be above 100m?
quite a few.
Definetly Frank Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Eric Clapton, Beach Boys, Bing Crosby, Genesis. And highly likely Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Chicago, Julio Iglesais, Carpenters
maybe more
Yeah thats what I thought. I feel like her streaming is not gonna go further down over the next 10 years and its going to stay stable for now. I have a feeling she is outstreaming them, just a comfirmation needed. Also 40 is not that old. Its not impossible for her to keep selling 2-3 million for her next 2 or 3 albums. Considering plenty of singers managed to make minor comebacks, some even major in their 40s. Adding a few million copies here and there might speed up the process. I think she has a pretty good shot… Read more »
Thank you so much for the explanation
With regards to biggest tracks to artists, do you know how the equivalent album sales generated by each track is generated?
Like for example BS and SIO, is it their physical sales + digital sales. + weighted streams + (EAS/1989 albums total EAS) * 1989’s total physical sales?
Or is it
physical sales + digital sales + (EAS/1989 albums total EAS) * 1989’s total CSPC?
or is it something else?
Hi Fanofpop!
For SIO for example, the calculation is:
– (streams SIO) / (streams total) * (sales of 1989)
– same calcuation for all the other lps where SIO is present (compils, lives, EPs, …)
– (physical singles sales) * 0.3
– (digital singles sales) * 0.15
– streams in EAS
Then, all these values are added together.
Thank you so much. Just to clarify for the Taylor’s versions of stuff like LS, is the new edition combined with the old. like let’s say the rerecorded LS gets 30 percent of all streams of the re-recorded album. But that pushes the original down to 20 percent of the original album. would it be 20 percent times sales of original fearless plus 30 percent of re-recorded fearless sales? or would it be total streams of both LS/ total streams of both fearless multiplied by total sales of both albums. thank you so much for taking the time to explain… Read more »
hey MJD, there’s something I noticed about the Physical singles to EAS process. in Your article about CSPC you say that Physical singles are weighted 3 to 1 when we convert them to album units. Yet in you analysis you use Physical singles*0.3 instead of Physical singles*(1/3), Which wouldn’t make any difference for recent releases, but for older artists who sold Tens of millions of Physical singles that does make a noticeable gap. Madonna for example sold 75,210,000 units in this format, it’s converted to 22,563,000 EAS in her analysis, yet if we actually use the 1/3 ratio it’s 25,070,000… Read more »
Hello, Is there ever going to be an update on physical / digital sales of artists studied in 2016 / 2017? Thanks for your great work!
Hi Michael!
Why not? Actually a few of them have been updated, the recent updates were Rihanna and Taylor Swift who were both first published in 2016, also historical artists like Queen. Obviously, the big legacy artists take time to complete and aren’t the fastest growing ones in terms of percentage so they aren’t a priority for now.
Could Fleetwood Mac be a possible choice for an update? They keep on selling pretty well (physical albums and downloads) and that might make a difference
Update ariana grande song and album sales please
You are so annoyingly persistent it almost feels you are trying to rile up the people who run this site so they don’t update ariana
Chris, I already moved your last message to spam, the next one will make your IP go straight to the blocking list!
I’m so sorry
Update ariana grande discography please 🙏
Can we get an update the 2020s CSPC total per decade?
Ariana Grande plizzz🙏🙏🙏
How do artist streams EAS section get updated? some are up to date and some are a month old
I take it you mean the Artist Ranking-CSPC-Overall sales list? It’s reliant on people using the search tool for that artist. The date in the last column relates to the last time someone carried out a search for the artist.
Hey Martin, yeah thx that’s what I meant 🙂
I have tried that a couple of times over the last week for Celine but it still shows May 8th as the last update.
Ah ok, I guess there must be some kind of issue/glitch behind the scenes. I’ve sent MJD a message, so that he can look into it.
If you think about Celine, here is the save history: 04/17/21: 2,721,318,389 04/18/21: 2,766,030,147 04/30/21: 2,744,974,009 05/08/21: 3,028,598,361 The last correct total is from 04/17/21, with 45 songs over 10 million and 2 over 100 million. The 45 million jump the following date corrupted the data and set itself as the new comparison point, meaning only days where searches are done when there are duplicates could be saved from that point. On 4/30/21, there were 47 songs over 10 million and 2 over 100 million, so 2 duplicates among 10m+ songs. On 05/08/21, there were 46 songs over 10 million,… Read more »
Hi pat200!
They are updated thanks to users’ searches. When top selling artists aren’t updated for some time, it’s usually because an inflated streaming count has managed to be saved in spite of our script to control this. Basically, no new total is saved because when user search for them the new total is higher than the last saved one, because the latter saved some tracks duplicates as they appear when Spotify does its daily routine to update all figures.
there’s a youtube channrl that makes videos comparing sales and they used your sales as a source in 1 or 2 videos, but dont explain the cspc method in the video, because honestly i dont think they realise, so the comments are claiming that all the sales are overly inflated and ridiculous because they dont know the method
Ariana Grande albums and song sales hasn’t received an update since 2019
Hi Chris!
I think that after 7 requests in 9 days it’s clear you want Ariana Grande to be updated 😉 no need to spam!
Yes please update her sales 😭
An Eminem update would be lot better