Artists who have yet to reach their peak?
Many of you enjoy advanced analytics. Others love to follow closely their favorite artists. In both cases, you will adore this piece of data! Do you know when an artist reaches his peak? After how many albums, or how many years? How he does it? Does he use the Christmas market, or build anticipation with a long hiatus? After peaking, who drops the most, females, males or bands? Nobody ever answered these questions. Well, nobody up to today as all these questions are addressed right here.
Setting up some rules…
Just like inside the article about the biggest flops we studied so far, we need to define rules in order to apply meaningful comparisons. Here too, various non-representative albums are excluded from our statistics. This refers to albums which are too recent to make conclusions, Christmas releases, side-projects Soundtracks, EPs and local language albums.
Ultimately, 97 careers that we have studied remain. As always, all numbers are expressed in equivalent album sales rather than pure sales since they are much more representative of the success of an era. That’s why we will be extensively using the acronym EAS which stands for Equivalent Album Sales. As many as 95 of the careers studied include a peak era which produced more than 5 million EAS.
History helps us understand the present as well as the future. Thanks to our extensive database, we will have a clear view of what it takes to peak. Thus, it will be much easier for all of you to set up valid expectations for the upcoming releases of your favorite artists.
Adele has already reached her peak.
A look at the top of the Billboard 200 shows that at least on K-pop boy band has crossed over now.
Hi Donald! No doubt I’ll disagree with that. It has been long since the high BB200 first week peaks do not require a mass appeal. A fan base is all it takes to be #1 for about a decade. The K-Pop movement is growing, that is for sure, but it hasn’t cross over at all, not even BTS. At the moment, their single Fake Love has about 3 million audience on US radio. Basically, while they have a relevant fan base, if you ask who is BTS to people on the street the huge majority will have absolutely no idea.… Read more »
How much higher than number one can they get? And I didn’t say the movement, I said on[e] boy band.
As previously stated Donald, nowadays chart peaks in album charts are rather pointless. They can get 10 #1 albums in 6 months they still wouldn’t have “crossed over” if that’s the same people buying their records and if the general public never heard about them. Their single isn’t even Top 100 on mainstream airplay, the GP clearly don’t know them. Then, it’s a movement rather than one act. BTS is the flagship of K-Pop, but it’s a whole community that is growing. Basically, their clips got added to Nerds/Manga/Video Games themed TV channels. There is several of them in most… Read more »
A very great article, I loved it! Thank you MJD!
Great article MJD, as always!
I didn’t expect you to do an analyzation about Christina’s upcoming studio album, Liberation. I have some questions. How much do you think Liberation going to sold worldwide (in CSPC)? How is the possibility for the album to debut at #1 in US? Also, how many units do you think Liberation going to sold at the first week, in US and worldwide? Thankyou. I just need to know about these in expert’s eye like you, because we’ve been expecting this album for years.
So they have their niche markets and nothing beyond?
Well, I’m not sure we can use the term niche market for such mass numbers. The mechanics of their markets are indeed close to what we see as niche markets though. If we look at the example of EXO, their studio albums sold 1,3m, 1,3m, 1,2m, 1,6m. They grew a bit with their last effort, but as you can see that’s the same group of persons purchasing them, very is no elasticity between figures. More, their 5 EPs all sold 560k +/- 120k. Not only they all sold virtually the same, independently of the success or not of the singles,… Read more »
Almost forgot, you said that One Direction is lone boy band out there with any major success right now. What about the J-Pop and K-Pop groups? I don’t follow those nations as closely as I follow the US-UK-Canada-Australia… I mostly only look at who’s number one in Japan and Germany.
I haven’t mention them since they are specific. Japanese and Korean markets do not follow the same rules at all. Most buyers can’t care less about the artistic view there, it’s all about image / representation. The huge majority of sales are done to fans, the penetration to the rest of the population can be very limited even when you sell well. People collect records much, much more than elsewhere there. This corrupts most statistics about success, at least from an album-era perspective. There, it’s really the artists which are successful rather than recordings!
“Truly fascinating.” I’ll agree with that. It will be interesting to revisit this after you’ve analyzed 500 acts and then again after a thousand to see if the same patterns still hold. Bands have fallen by the wayside because we’re in an era that’s dominated by solo acts. Seems that each pop generation lasts about 5 years and that each era yields its own crop of stars and superstars. I didn’t notice any mention of girl groups in there. Outside of the Supremes, are their sales so low as to not make much of an impact on the stats? And… Read more »
Hi Donald! I have split “groups” and “bands” depending on how they contributed to the creative part of their careers. Thus, the Bee Gees are counted into bands. Two girl groups, the Spice Girls and the Destiny’s Child, are counted into “groups”. Surely Hallyday does the job about consistent hit maker. Billy Joel too I suppose. I may be missing the point you would like to be highlighted though? By “lightning in a bottle” factor, do you refer to the biggest 10 peaks which do not follow standard rules? If yes, what I can say is that these kind of… Read more »
Anyways, this was a very good and interesting article, as usual, thank you MJD. Keep it up 🙂
“while groups are able to score hit albums for 20 years or more.”
You kept pointing out that boybands/groups fade away the quickest so I’m sure you meant “bands” instead of “groups” here (page 6)
Hi but!
You are correct, thanks for that, it’s fixed now 🙂
As for divas who’s the most consistent, the form in the last page is unfair, some divas reach their peak in first album, some in 2-5 album, some in 5+ album
Hi SkkyWill!
Statistics aren’t made to be fair or unfair (to Barbra), they are what they are. As stated, that’s just one more perspective. It’s not the be-all and end-all of consistency. It’s a way to see how artists faced the challenge of holding strong once they smashed hard and got the industry supporting them the most.
Ok, I see