The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in Oceania & Africa

Data analysis

Establishing Britney‘s albums sales was already a fascinating target, it would be a waste of information to stop it there though. Owning data for that many countries gives us the possibility to better gauge sales in markets that are usually unknown. To achieve this goal, we need to identify markets where artists evolve the same way.

For example, let’s filter on countries where Britney outsold Oops. Below graphic is a Base 100 Chart, fixing BOMT at 100 and showing the evolution in percentage of BOMT sales each album sold.

It is no coincidence if the 3 countries fitting into that filter are all Asian countries. Indeed, we can even push the analysis forward and notice that Britney hasn’t only outsold Oops, it also outsold BOMT in those markets. In all of them, sales remained consistent until Greatest Hits and in all of them, they massively tumbled from Blackout, never really recovering.

During the Part 2 article, I mentioned how the Philippines was influenced by Latin culture. Is that verified by statistics?

We can hardly get a more relevant graphic as all Latin countries evolved exactly the same way… and the Philippines too. Portugal and Argentina are slightly more receptive to compilations, which is something that does differ even in similar countries. Below graphics lists Asian countries not already covered on graph 1.

The attractiveness of compilations in various markets gets obvious. Interestingly, the two countries were Oops out-did BOMT are the two richest countries, Hong Kong and Singapore.

What can we get from filtering countries where Oops outsold BOMT by more than 1,1 to 1?

Once again, by filtering on one single relation (Oops vs BOMT) we get a complete curve very similar for all countries, with the only exception being again the strength of compilations in some markets.

No coincidence either in seeing all 4 Scandinavian countries emerging on this graph as well as a 6 Central Europe countries. The very interesting point to notice is that Turkey seems to be evolving the same way as Germanic countries. Is that true? Below graph adds the filter Greatest Hits selling at least 4 times less than BOMT.

Bang! Turkish sales follow the exact same pattern as Central Europe countries, just like Greece. If we check back figures from the previous article, we can deduce that Germany / 15 ~= Turkey + Greece.

Below is the list of countries where both Oops and Greatest Hits sold at least 80% of BOMT sales.

A very intriguing list of countries, all Islands or at least a rim, all of them kinda rich, all of them with historical connections in terms of music industry with the UK. It seems that Asia in particular is divided into two distinct segment. The first is made of Thailand, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore which follow patterns roughly similar to Japan. This latter country doesn’t reflect at all the remaining countries like India or the Philippines. In other words, a simple Japan * a factor isn’t a valid formula to estimate Asian sales.

I previously said that various markets almost disappeared from the map in recent years. How can we identify them? We met various evidences of Circus being a successful comeback for Britney. It came one decade after her debut, I’ll use it to identify those dying markets. Below graphic filters countries were Circus sold less than 10% of BOMT sales.

Isn’t it fascinating? Almost all Asian countries come out on this graphic, efficiently reflecting the disastrous evolution of album sales in this region. Even more striking is how various of those countries were still seeing decent sales by Greatest Hits release and then died for good.

This in-depth study of Britney‘s albums sales comes to an end, I hope you enjoyed reading it! There is plenty more information to analyze from those figures so if you would like to see a graph added, feel free to ask!

Sources: IFPI, RIAJ, Billboard, ARIA, RIANZ, Way Back Machine, Britney.com, Zobbel, Chartmasters.org.