CSPC: Meat Loaf Popularity Analysis
Streaming Sales
Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 157 million of the 272 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:
Audio Stream – 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream – 11,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = 272/157 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750
Streaming Part 1
Streams of Meat Loaf are rather disappointing. Obviously, his target audience isn’t the most fitting to streaming users. Also, the lenght of his tracks don’t make it easy either. The two most streamed songs from Bat Out Of Hell, the title track and Paradise by the Dashboard Light, last a whopping 18:16 minutes together. This is a huge handicap to be featured into playlists.
We can notice it with streams of Dead Ringer for Love. The duet with Cher is arguably nowhere near as popular as the 4 main songs from Bat Out Of Hell but has similar streams on Spotify. It’s more traditional length of 4:21 minutes make it easier to be included on playlists and subsequently gain healthy streams.
In terms of equivalent album sales (EAS), the debut album stands on 115,000, Dead Ringer on 23,000 and Midnight at the Lost and Found on an awful 3,000 units.
RIP Meat! Here’s a look at some Spotify figures for his hits/albums. Meat Loaf’s discography hasn’t survived the streaming age well. His biggest album is obviously his debut smash “Bat Out of Hell”, but even that one has rather disappointing streaming figures. The raw figure for the BOOH album is 269.2M plays – far from the 500M mark to make it to the list of big streaming albums of 1977. A list led by “Rumours” with a whopping 3032.8M plays! Anyway, all told (incl. live vers. etc) here are the figures for the 7 tracks on his iconic debut: 2… Read more »
I was chatting with him privately, a few months ago, about something similar. My point was that the popularity of Don’t Stop Me Now, nowadays is not the same as it was back in the day (70s, 80s and 90s). It only became such a favourite and their 2nd most popular track, sometime in the 00s. I wouldn’t say it was a forgotten about track but so many of their other songs, were clearly and evidently more popular, more well known, more talked about, more played etc. IMO it gets a greater share of comps sales than it should, because… Read more »
Hi Thomas! These annual YouTube views give a quite clear reason of the share update: Dead Ringer For Love Sweden – 113k, #2 of the artist, 10% of his total views UK – 1.34m, #6 of the artist, 5% of his total views Brazil – 12.3k, #8 of the artist, 1.5% of his total views Basically, the track is way stronger on markets that had a head start on Spotify. As the platform got more global, it is going down to a more realistic position on his discography. These ‘shifts’ are always going to happen, but as streams and years… Read more »
Makes sense, thanks!
RIP
Now that you did Meatloaf how about doing Credence? C’mon guys everybody would love to see Credence!