Full Length related record Sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era – studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams – to get the full picture of an album’s popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.
All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.
How to understand this table? If you check this example of Ultimate Kylie those figures mean it sold 2,250,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 227,678 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.
The second part at the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album plus the share it represents on the overall package streams. Thus, streaming figures tell us Fever songs are responsible for 53% of the Ultimate Kylie tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 1,190,000 of its 2,250,000 album sales. We will now apply this concept to all compilations, live albums, music videos and EPs.
While in comparison to the remaining of Minogue tracks, this looks impressive, the figure is rather disappointing. It is below other 2001 songs like It’s Been A While by Staind, U Remind Me by Usher, Family Affair by Mary J Blige, Hero by Enrique Iglesias and many more which were nowhere near as big as Minogue‘s smash in first place. 3 years later, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head has 224.5M stream on spotify while It’s Been A While has 181.6M stream, U Remind Me has 233.3M, Family Affair has 195.5M and Hero has 219.6M. Aside from Usher, Kylie already… Read more »
Lady Gaga’s The Fame almost sold as much as Kylie’s entire discopraphy lol
If u think that is funny and her achievement are not impressive. Imagine how all the struggling artists out there feels like. Kylie’s achievement is already extraodinary and millions of singers out there would do anything just to achieve 10% of what she has achieve.
And Kylie’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” is bigger than any Lady Gaga song!
Esto no esta actualizado y algunos datos son incorrectos Light Years vendio 5.000.000 de copias en todo el mundo y muchos otros datos están mal
Álbumes: 25.000.000
Recopilatorios: 3.000.000
Sencillos: 63.000.000
Canciones fuera de álbumes y canciones promocionales: 500.000
Total: 91.500.000 ventas entre todo su material
Y la cifra sigue creciendo con Golden y su último recopilatorio y sin contar las colaboraciones que hizo con Nick Cave y otros artistas… Estimadamente para 2025 Kylie ya habrá superado las 100.000.000 y si lanza mas material lo hará en menos tiempo.
Hi Esneyder!
The article was updated 1 year ago only and album sales are correct. Do not believe everything you read. A figure of 5 million for Light Years for example is completely delusional. There is no need to throw out figures based on nothing, claiming she is on her way to reach 100 million when she did a bit more than half of that only!
There is no proof whatsoever that she has sold “90 million”. 40 million is a more accurate figure.
Hey MJD! You made a really great job with Kylie. Although it hurts to admit it – as a Kylie fan – this proves how she definitely is a UK/Oz based artist with occasional success outside of those borders… Anyway, I have a very precise question regarding Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’s French sales. They used to be estimated at around 900k, with a few years ago I remember reading an article on Charts In France sayig that this figure had been massively overestimated and that it was actually on less than 600,000 copies… I find it hard… Read more »
Hey MJD,
Amazing work you did there a few months ago.
Worldwide Sales figures for Kylie’s Latest album Golden are unavailable anywhere, apart from Mediatraffic which sounds totally unreliable.
Would be fantastic if you could update that part with your data, now that the campaign draws to a close.
Debate is rife on forums – only proper figures can get a proper picture.
Thanks a million.
I have to ask you something!! Where did you find the Fever sales in Bazil?! I never read nothing about it, it wasn’t even certified Gold by ABPD/PMB here, and we have only 2k with codes (after 2003).
To simply define an artist based on sales and your feeble attempt to undermine her popularity with an article on a online publication is simply sad. Should you look at the cultural impact Kylie Minogue has generated over a thirty year timespan as well as consistantly garnishing multiple top tens in multiple countries theoughout the globe speaks for itself. Not to mention doing so without the massive revenue market that is America. No one needs your analysis to validate her popularity. I understand you are seaching for a way to justify your opinion, but your opinion is just that, an… Read more »
Hi Scorn1031! Surely what’s bad is thinking that a fans board of people backing each other in believing their fave artist have been shaking the world of music and fashion for 30 years is an accurate place of information. You say she has “consistantly garnishing multiple top tens”, that’s false, in most markets she got 2-top 10 eras, with a huge 13 years hole in-between, and that’s it. You affirm, backed by nothing, that she is immensely popular. That is an opinion. Records sales are no opinion, they are facts, no matter if they are of your liking or not.… Read more »
I think you are both right in your own way. I have followed Kylie from the very beginning and although I stopped buying her releases (or anyone else’s for this matter) a long time ago, I am a supporter of hers.. There’s no doubt she made a difference with Kylie & Fever releases that we can categorized as an impact to an extent but apart from that, I don’t think she qualifies for one of the biggest selling artists…. Yes she’s had a few top 10s singles and yes she’s had a few #1 albums (uk & Oz) but that’s… Read more »
Absolutely agree. Kylie Minogue’s fans are the most delusional ones, to be honest.
I agree with others that your dislike of Kylie is very clear…I am from Asia and Kylie is a very welcome western pop star. She is treated as the national treasure of Australia. She became international without US market, which is really impressive. We all know that Kylie is not comparable with Madonna on selling numbers because nobody could. People put their names together because they have very similar fan base ( Dancepop, Gay icon, in a friendly way) Kylie is probably the only mainstream artist only focusing on dancepop throughout her career. Your complete ignorance of her tour makes… Read more »
Golden has sold 288k not 100k worldwide actually.
Hi Sarah!
I suppose 3 clarifications are needed:
1) the article is from April
2) the 100k figure you state is pure units shipments estimates, the 288k involves streaming points
3) Mediatraffic are massively inaccurate anyway, they can’t be stated as facts