The truth about Britney Spears’ album sales in American continent
Hey! Do you like this article title ? A bit provocative for sure. For once I have no issue using an eye grabbing title since this article contains insights and views you will undoubtedly love to read about.
Among the many discussions online related to the music industry, Britney Spears’ album sales are likely the most debated of the last 15 years. The subject has reached unseen limits. It is fairly usual to see inflated or deflated figures from biased people, but seeing photoshopped certifications and fake emails to support made up claims remains a rare phenomenon. Most of these occurrences are related to Britney’s sales.
Ironically, while a lot of fake figures released by fans labelled as “according to Jive”, the diva did have an official website with the Copyright of her label, Britney.com, listing her sales and certifications.
Those lists of certifications were a bit tricky as no criteria for Gold or Platinum was mentioned. In fact they weren’t properly awarded certs but rather sales converted into certifications levels. Thus, depending on the date on which you accessed that list, you saw different awards when the criteria was changed. This trick of translating sales into certifications complicates the matter at first, but after investigating all level details, they reveal numbers far more precise than any unique award.
I’ve worked out all this information for you, country by country, and combined it with sales data from each country’s own certification organizations. Since those lists were last updated several years ago, it focuses on albums up to the release of The Singles Collection. For some countries like the US or the UK the approach isn’t relevant as we already have enough information to know the score, but for minor markets this is a gold mine with pretty outstanding results.
Want to know them? They are all presented here!
Today, we will start with Part 1 – sales from the American continent.
where is the 2006 archive? Please Post that! Thanks
where is the 2006 archive
Where does the 14 million RIAA certification for BOMT in the US come from? The album sold 12 million combined with both Nielsen and BMG Music Club sales. I thought albums which were big sellers on BMG tended to not be on Columbia House and vice versa, indeed, were Britney’s albums even available from Columbia? So where does the extra two million from BOMT come from?
You were wrong. 12 million is from nielsen alone and almost 2 million came from BMG music club. It is widely reported already and it is widely reported that BOMT was certified 14 times by the RIAA
Why is there never a “bottom line” to these summaries? So how many albums did she sell?
Hi Danny,
The bottom line will become at the end of all parts with the updated CSPC article 😉
Hello MJD,Would you please give me the link of web archive for the sales by 2006 .I Only found the 2007 version.which said she sold 83 million units worldwide
It’s crazy how she’s bigger in South America than many bigger divas like Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Barbra Streisand
Hi Trish! As you may have noticed with examples like Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, One Direction or Justin Bieber, Disney / Teen acts are truly massive in Latin America. In the other side, there isn’t that much market for adult contemporary stuff, except when they are translated in Portuguese / Spanish or used in a popular telenovelas. Disney series, telenovelas, teen acts, live shows covered by TV news… in other words, those markets are heavily TV-oriented in terms of promotion, with radios not as much a key as elsewhere. Thus, it is crucial to have a strong visual impact. That’s… Read more »
Wonderful idea. Keep up the good job 🙂
Wow, this is a very nice thing to do, thanks you very much 🙂
Would you say her sales in Mexico+South America are weak, good, or great?
Hi Eternium!
Her sales are definitely great! For example Circus sold over 200k in Latin America, by 2008 standards for international albums that clearly huge. It was among English Top 20 albums of the year both in 2008 and 2009 in Mexico, at #11 and #16. Even Coldplay’s Viva La Vida hasn’t done as well, being #8 in 2008 then missing the Top 20 in 2009. The only albums which outperformed it charts-wise at the time were Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Metallica’s Death Magnetic, albums from truly gigantic artists there!
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Highly anticipating the update of the Asian sales! 🙂 Thanks so much for doing this!
Hi MJD! Thank you for doing this article! I’ve always been confused about the sales/certifications provided on Britney.com, so I really appreciate that you’re explaining this to us, and the fact that you’re providing figures for the majority of her albums. She’s had a very big career in Latin America, even if some figures have been inflated in the past (like the Brazilian sales for “…Baby One More Time” and “Oops!… I Did It Again”), the real figures are also very impressive. Could you please post your estimations for “Femme Fatale”, “Britney Jean,” and “Glory” in Latin America? Not only… Read more »
Hi Stephen!
As you can guess I came to build this article while preparing the comprehensive update of Britney CSPC article, so all estimates for most recent albums will come too!
The figure of The Singles Collection in the list is the one from Mexico, typo now fixed! Its codes are up to 62,500 although the last one is likely not fully sold – it was a big one!
BTW, you can decide if you prefer Europe or Asia first 😉
Fair point about the CSPC article! And thank you for fixing the typo! 65,000 definitely seems accurate.
I’d love it if you could do Asia first and then Europe. 🙂 Thank you so much again!
MJD, could you later do the same for Mariah? I would eternally be thankful for an overview over her stats in Asia, since that is her personal “region of controversial figures”.
Thanks in advance and massive props to your work and this nice idea of “gifting” fans and chart-followers with further insights!
Hi Luminator!
There is such list of certifications for Mariah in Asian countries except for a few specific cases, so a similar article isn’t possible.
I’m taking time to get into every country details to build better formulas for other artists though. I’ll be posting curves of Asian individual markets evolution in the last 25 years to help visualizing better sales there, most likely Mariah will be the example used to illustrate the calculations!