The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in Asia
 East asia – Japan
Although the availability of precise figures from Oricon creates the illusion of a market under control, we know how difficult it is to figure out the reality when analyzing them.
The main reason for this complexity is the ineligibility of imports until 2003. They represented roughly one third of sales for foreign releases, but this ratio was very different from one album to another.
Britney’s debut album, …Baby One More Time entered at #17 in March 1999 with 20,270 copies sold. It was certified Gold (100,000) that same month and then Platinum (200,000) in May. Sales from Oricon were higher than those levels when they were awarded. By the time of the Platinum award the album had indeed shifted 235,000 units. Thus, certifications bring us no information about copies imported. When BOMT left the Top 100 in August, it was on almost 280,000 units scanned. The #100 album was averaging 3,000 units per week so there is still plenty of room for additional sales. Assuming an average of 1,500 copies per week until May 2000 when its promotion came to a close, that represents an extra 60,000 units for a total of 340,000 units. From the release of Oops! to today, the album added about 10% of its initial sales in other markets, applying this ratio to Japan we get a calculated retail sales to date figure of 375,000 units.
Obviously, this misses imports. Thanks to Britney.com’s list of awards we know they weren’t high enough to push the album over half a million total sales, although it was most likely fairly close.
Oops sold 242,000 units during its first 14 weeks according to Oricon. Sales of this album were much more frontloaded, plus the Japanese market doesn’t boom at Christmas, thus it didn’t that much after. Estimates are on 1,500 units per week for five additional months and then 10% more units up to now for a grand total of 300,000 units. Again, this is without imports which were increasing in proportion every year.
Then comes Britney. It sold only 191,130 units as per Oricon, nevertheless it is mentioned with over 500,000 sales by Britney.com. While surprising, this isn’t inconsistent with available data. In fact, the album is the only pre-2003 set for which we have a piece of information about imports as it sold 99,000 units from December 2001 to November 2002. Interestingly, the album’s first three weeks of sales through imports are missing as they fall into Oricon’s previous year. This absence of early imports is crucial as Britney sold nearly 107,000 national copies during those weeks. To resume:
The figure of 60,000 units is an estimate of the 37 uncharted weeks to November 2002, a high one considering the album has been in and out the Top 100 for several months. If we use a simple cross multiplication to solve the question, it results in 73,000 imports during the first three weeks. The total is then 423,000 overall copies by November 2002, a figure much closer to half a million than the initial Oricon figure of 191,000 sales.
From the In The Zone era imports have been included in the charts, which had also been extended from a Top 100 to a Top 300. This massively improves their coverage. The Greatest Hits estimate shown in Chartmasters’ article was too high because of The Singles Collection cannibalizing its sales, which goes on to show that every detail is important. You can’t forget about discography dynamics while estimating a specific release. It is confirmed at 750,000 units by 2006, it then sold 15,000 units a year, until 2009’s compilation, and roughly 5,000 units per year since.
Merging all the data together concludes on the following album sales to date:
- Baby One More Time – 500,000
- Oops!… I did It Again – 425,000
- Britney – 525,000
- In The Zone – 450,000
- Greatest Hits, My Prerogative – 840,000
- Blackout – 100,000
- Circus – 140,000
- The Singles Collection – 100,000