Amy Winehouse albums and songs sales
This month marks 8 years since British songstress Amy Winehouse sadly passed away at the age of 27.
Everybody remembers the iconic Back to Black. Despite being released nearly 13 years ago, the album is still making yearly sales rankings. How much have all of her albums sold across all formats? That’s what we are going to analyse today.
Amy Winehouse started career in 2003 with Frank, a record that went mostly unnoticed until the singer’s breakthrough between 2006-2008.
Exactly 3 years later in 2006, the songstress released her second studio album, Back to Back. The iconic record quickly gained traction, becoming a huge seller around the world.
Unfortunately, Back to Black was the iconic diva’s final studio album, and it wasn’t until 2011’s posthumous effort Lioness: Hidden Treasures, which consisted of mostly covers of old songs, that the singer would drop another record.
Since her passing, Amy Winehouse has sold millions of albums. How much have they sold in total across all formats? We’ll find out now!
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 Amy Winehouse‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will also determine their true popularity.
If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explanations. I fully recommend watching it before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the numbers directly.
UPDATE DATES:
– Sales (albums, singles): 2019/07/19
– Streaming (audio, video): 2019/07/19
The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)
There are two ways to understand this revolutionary concept. In the first place, there is this Scribe video posted below. If you are unaware of the CSPC method, you will get the full idea within just a pair of minutes.
If you are a mathematical person, and want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.
Now let’s get into the artist’s sales figures in detail in order to apply this concept and define the act’s true popularity!
Album sales of Amy Winehouse
Original Album Sales – Comments
These results aren’t exactly shocking. Back to Black‘s sales speak for themselves and even before the singer’s passing, the album had already sold a massive 11 million. Today, sales of this record stand at 15.94 million.
Winehouse‘s debut, Frank, benefited tremendously from Back to Black‘s success. The record was only the 102th best-selling album of 2004 in the UK. In comparison, it was the 37th best-selling album of 2007.
Lioness: Hidden Treasures performs fairly well for a posthumous record with barely any new songs. It was the 11th best-selling album of 2011 per the IFPI, and has moved 3.3 million copies to date.
Sales of Back to Black are still going strong years after Winehouse‘s passing. In 2018, it was the 80th best-selling album of the year in the UK, while also making the Year-End chart in 2017, 2016 and 2015.
All in all, Amy Winehouse’s 3 albums have sold a total of 23.18 million. These numbers are certainly remarkable for an artist who sadly passed away at such a young age.
Song sales of Amy Winehouse
Physical Singles
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
With a low market and the profile of an album seller, Amy Winehouse‘s physical sales are quite low at barely over 600,000 units overall.
Digital Songs
Having only released two studio albums before her passing, one can’t expect much from Amy Winehouse‘s digital sales. Keep in mind both of those records came out during a time the digital market hadn’t reached its peak at all.
Still, the songs from Back to Black are well known enough to pull good numbers over the years, pulling a respectable 19 million.
All in all, Winehouse has sold a total of 21.6 million digital singles.
Streaming
Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. To factor in the growing impact of multiple Asian countries where these platforms aren’t always the go-to site for music streaming, more sources have been added.
In order to account for their real popularity in each relevant country, the below sources have been used along with the mentioned ratios that reflect the market share of each area.
Audio Streams
– South Korea : Genie streams * 3.05 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan : AWA streams * 100/5.5 (AWA has 5.5% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Elsewhere : Spotify streams * (370 – 8.5 – 9.5 – 33 – 9) / 207 (370 million global subscribers minus 8.5 million from South Korea minus 9.5 million from Japan minus 33 million from China divided by the number of Spotify only users minus 9 million more Asian users) + Genie streams * 3.05 (uses Genie rather than Spotify to extrapolate markets like Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam)
Video Streams
– China* : Xiami streams * 125/6.5 (Xiami has just over 5% of the Chinese streaming market)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views
*since 96.4% of Chinese streaming platforms are free users, that paid-for users pay less than $2 a month and that they are also used as video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted in par with YouTube streams.
Audio Stream value – 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 11,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * 310/207 + Genie * 3.05*2 + AWA * 100/5.5 ) / 1500 + ( Xiami * 125/6.5 + YouTube ) / 11750
Top streaming hits of Amy Winehouse
It isn’t surprising to see tracks from Back to Black among the singer’s top tracks.
What may be surprising is the amount of streams these tracks have accumulated over the years. On Spotify, all singles from this record have reached 100 million streams, with some of them going as high as 300 million – simply outstanding results for an album released in 2006.
As Winehouse‘s debut was a lot weaker than its successor, nothing from this record really stands out, aside from Stronger Than Me, which has a respectable 64 million streams on Spotify and 76 million on YouTube.
Tracks from Lioness: Hidden Treasures pull respectable numbers for a posthumous release. Our Day Will Come, a cover of Ruby & the Romantics, is the top track, nearing 50 million streams on Spotify.
Full catalog breakdown
If you are familiar with the artist’s catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.
Compilations sales of Amy Winehouse
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.
The distribution process
How to understand this table? In the example of I Told You I Was Trouble these figures mean it sold 950,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 1,901,488 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.
The second part on the right of the table shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents on the overall package. Thus, streaming figures tell us songs from the Back to Black album are responsible for 97% of the I Told You I Was Trouble track list attractiveness. This means it generated 921,000 of its 950,000 album sales and so forth for the other records. We then apply this process to all compilations present on the table.
Full Length related records Sales – Summary
Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album’s success – the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.
Total Album (all types) Sales per Country
Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.
Amy Winehouse Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by Amy Winehouse achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
Albums CSPC results
In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.
As a reminder:
- Studio Album: sales of the original album
- Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
- Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
- Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
- Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)
Artist career totals
See where the artist ranks among remaining singers
At 22.571 million EAS, Back to Black is undoubtedly among the biggest albums of the past 20 years. At the same time, this record represents 71% of Winehouse‘s CSPC total.
Since the last update in 2016, not only has this record surpassed the 20 million mark, but it has also surpassed other blockbusters such as Celine Dion‘s The Colour of My Love, Rolling Stone‘s Sticky Fingers, and ABBA‘s Super Trouper, among others.
Sales for Back to Black are so massive that the respectable 4.8 million for Frank seems quite low. In reality, this is a great figure for a record of its nature, although it was hugely boosted by Back to Black‘s success.
Being a cash-grab posthumous record filled with mostly covers of old songs, Lioness: Hidden Treasures barely adds anything to its original album format. Still, this record pulls a respectable 3.3 million EAS.
At 31,521,000 EAS with only three albums, Amy Winehouse has one of the highest averages for acts who have debuted this millennium.
Singles CSPC results
The list is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each song. Therefore, these figures are not merged units of singles formats. Instead, it includes weighted sales of the song’s physical single, download, ringtone and streaming as well as its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
1. 2006 – Amy Winehouse – Back To Black [Back To Black] – 4,450,000
2. 2007 – Amy Winehouse – Valerie [Back To Black] – 4,170,000
3. 2006 – Amy Winehouse – Rehab [Back To Black] – 3,580,000
4. 2006 – Amy Winehouse – You Know I’m No Good [Back To Black] – 2,870,000
5. 2006 – Amy Winehouse – Tears Dry On Their Own [Back To Black] – 2,100,000
If you feel inspired by this list, we just created this CSPC Amy Winehouse playlist on Spotify!
Discography results
Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we know that her sales represent 17.67 million times the purchase of her entire discography. Coupled with her total sales, it translates into an ASR score of 134.
It is similar to the score of artists like Alicia Keys, Avril Lavigne, and Justin Timberlake. The ranking of all artists studied so far is available too at this link.
Records & Achievements
- At 22,571,000 EAS, Back to Black is the most successful album released in 2006.
- At 9,930,000 pure sales, Back to Black is the 2nd highest selling album in Europe of the last 20 years.
- At 360 weeks, Back to Black is the longest charting album of all-time in France.
- At 397 weeks, Back to Black is the 4th longest charting album of all-time in Italy.
NB: EAS means Equivalent Album Sales.
You may be interested in…
… best-selling artists, albums, and singles
To improve your navigation we created several amazing cross-artists lists posted inside the CSPC: Data Collector article. Click on it to see the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far!
… similar artists
To put figures from this article into perspective, click on the images below to reach career breakdowns of similar artists:
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs.