Rated recently as the most powerful women in the industry a few months ago by Fortune magazine, Beyonce has been growing a lot since the days of No, No, No hit single way back in 1998 with the Destiny’s Child. Most powerful doesn’t necessarily mean best selling artist though so how the diva stands in comparison to her peers in that field?
It all started in a very standard way with a string of successful eras with her group from 1998 to 2001. During that period, she met and started to date Jay-Z that she married in 2008. Retrospectively, this meeting can be regarded as a tremendous event for the music industry as a whole. The relationship obviously brought several key hits to Beyonce but the pair’s combined strengths also enabled them to invest in various brands from the Brooklyn Nets to TIDAL, developing more and more their status as business powerhouses.
Among the very top selling albums of the last 20 years though, it is all about Adele, Eminem or Britney Spears with no records from the Destiny’s Child, Beyonce or Jay-Z. Does that mean the couple is primarily successful as business associates rather than recording artists? Well, maybe that’s going too far.
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 Beyonce‘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.
Great numbers! Thanks for the update?
But I have a quick question, why did Halo and If I Were A Boy gain so much (the former +2.4M), while Single Ladies gained only about 600K
Because they are better songs. Talent won.
Hi Beysus! Mainly because of South Korea sales. Most data you will find online for SK will add sales from charted weeks, but that leaves out years of healthy sales. During my updates from the last few months, I went into checking every weekly chart to make sure to define correctly the pace of sales of catalog songs. IIWAB charted time to time from 2011 to 2014, at times with 2 distinct versions. Even if there isn’t that many “visible” sales, we can highlight a trend of 100k-ish sales per year on average during that period. Plus initial sales, it… Read more »
The way she just stopped caring about charts is stupid. Both 4 and BEYONCÉ could’ve been bigger if she would have just gave the world iasf 2.0-3.0
Speaking only about album sales was Britney. Looking for all aspects and considering that Bey was big with DC’s too, definitly Beyoncé was the biggest female act of 00’s.
Seeing that all of Beyoncé’s outputs in the 2000’s were 14M+, does this make her the biggest female artist of the 2000’s, or is it Britney Spears?
“The only female in the last 20 years to have 3 albums to hit B’day level with sps.”
What do you mean? I didn’t understand exactly.
Basically, she is the only female artist from her generation with 3 different albums over 13,5m CSPC. Accounting for all acts, only Eminem and Coldplay did it too.
Great!
Shouldn’t her worldwide album sales amount be 37,630,000 if we include sales outside of her studio albums? She sold 4,2 million with live/remix albums.
Hi Ingrid!
Most of these 4,2 million sales from remaining long formats come from music videos which aren’t tallied on this global album sales figures!
What are her ringtones US sales by song?
Hi JRVV! Her Top 25 songs by US Ringtones stand as below: 1 – Irreplaceable – 3,750,000 2 – Check On It – 1,800,000 3 – Baby Boy – 1,600,000 4 – Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) – 1,450,000 5 – Crazy in Love – 1,250,000 6 – Halo – 1,100,000 7 – Diva – 1,000,000 8 – Ring the Alarm – 850,000 9 – Dangerously in Love – 800,000 10 – If I Were a Boy – 700,000 11 – Love in This Club, Pt. II – 700,000 12 – Me, Myself and I – 650,000 13… Read more »
What about her US top 10 digital singles? Has single ladies topped 5.8M or halo 4M?
Hi Musicfan!
Her Top 10 DLs in the US stand as below:
1 – Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) 5725k
2 – Halo 4100k
3 – Irreplaceable 3650k
4 – Telephone 3500k
5 – If I Were a Boy 3375k
6 – Crazy in Love 2500k
7 – Drunk in Love 2150k
8 – Sweet Dreams 1900k
9 – Beautiful Liar 1675k
10 – Check On It 1650k
Some questions: UK’s sales dropped a lot and surprised me. I had noticed 4 sold 710.000 there for example. Is this number with streams? 4: The Remix was certified Silver in UK. You estimated 20.000 copies only. Is this correct? BEYONCÉ has no increase in US’ sales and a huge drop in UK. I though this album had a better performance as catalog for so negative updates. You posted that BEYONCÉ sold 100.000 copies in Brazil but it had 2 codes: AA100000 from Standart Edition and AA15000 from Platinum Edition. The increase I was expected. Good job and thanks!!! That’s… Read more »
he’s not faithful with her updates, he pulls direct sales
Hi KantClark! I got various DUS figures (the UK equivalent of Soundscan) figures for Bey and noticed that she has been getting massive streaming units lately with her albums. Previously, I had underestimated the share of SEA from her recent catalog sales. If we take the example of 4, it indeed scanned 710,000 units to date overall, with streams. For catalog albums, streams use to be fairly low, but Beyoncé’s patterns are different. Here is some data: – by 07/04/2012, scanned 541,007 units – by 11/05/2013, scanned 603,548 units, an increase of 1,097 copies per week during 57 weeks –… Read more »
Thanks! Very clarifying. You just forget to respond me about 4 The Remix. It was certified Silver in UK. I really doubt that streams were so huge for add so many equivalent sales. I think 20.000 copies sold worldwide is very very conservative. Good job one more time.
About 4: The Remix, it was a digital-only release, it sold next to nothing really. In most countries, it charted along with the main album, so these sales will appear into 4 instead. In the rare countries were it got charted seperately like in the UK, most of its sales were achieved from to streams only. Now it seems that it got better, but during quite some time the accounting of streams was completely messed by the OCC, they were counting streams of songs into all albums which contained them. For example, both Beyoncé and Beyoncé Plat Edition received the… Read more »
the site is so “serious” that in the last ego update it had 1,800,000, and now it is with 1,730,000
first artist I see losing sale.
He’s dropped just about every artist’s pure sales as he updates them because he was overestimating certain markets. There have been plenty of articles pointing this out. Coldplay and Britney Spears were the first to have it happen.
Hi Miguel!
The fact that we care about fixing former flaws, we care about looking for optimization and we care about being fully transparent about it is precisely what makes us a serious site. Sites sticking to massively inflated numbers for decades are the ones which can’t be considered seriously 😉
The first artist you see losing sale? You are seriously wrong miguel.
Jayz is so lucky.