The Car, the 7th album of the Arctic Monkeys, is out. The band is hotter than ever having charted at least 4 catalog tracks inside the Global Spotify chart for several months.

Can the TikTok madness, which is turning viral so many of their old songs, push their last effort to make it a commercial success?

A big picture of the Arctic Monkeys' career

For long, the commercial results of the group was often described by first week sales of their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.

Back in 2006, it shifted 363,735 units to enter charts at #1 in the UK.

More often than not, fastest-selling records are irrelevant. In general, they highlight large fanbases or hyped winners of a reality TV show rather than legitimate success.

The Arctic Monkeys had none of that. Notably, they created an unreal buzz on the back of their initial singles making their record all the more meritorious.

Now into the game for over 15 years, where does the band stand? Are they one more British act which failed to break the US market? Have they been able to sustain the initial hype surrounding them?

The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)

As usual, I'll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge results of the artist. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all related 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.

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.

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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!

Arctic Monkeys Album Sales

Original Album Sales - Comments

The Arctic Monkeys sold over 12 million studio albums up to date. Obviously, they aren’t on the same league as Coldplay or Linkin Park.

Still, that’s a more than respectable average of nearly 2 million for each of their 7 first records. 

Moreover, AM came close to become their best seller in spite of the decreasing market. With 1.3 million sales in the US, it was also their true breakthrough at the global scale.

Thanks to impressive catalog sales, both their debut and AM are now closing in 4 million sales, while Favourite Worst Nightmare is over 2 million. Both Humbug and Suck It and See may reach 1 million in the long run.

The last two albums failed to gain momentum so far. Only time will tell if they will become fans' favorites and increase their sales thanks to collectors.

Arctic Monkeys songs sales

Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.

Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, he is rewarded with 100% of these units, while featured acts share among them a 50% piece of the totals.

Physical Singles

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

Physical singles have been dead for long. As a matter of fact, the only ones which still sell are collectors for fans.

Given that the Arctic Monkeys got many of them, they register solid sales from this format.

Well, solid in relation to the market size as numbers in absolute term remain quite low despite hundrids of weeks charted on UK physical singles charts.

Digital Songs

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1.5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

Due to their limited appeal in the US up to their 2013 era, the Arctic Monkeys achieved average to low figures in digital sales.

The catalog strength of their tracks coupled with their popularity in the UK increase results still. Albeit only two of their tracks top the million plateau, I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor and Do I Wanna Know?.

The latter is arguably the top seller, with 2.32 million units. Even this number seems low considering the song's popularity nowadays. As incredible as it is, the track wasn't so big upon release, peaking at #70 in the US and missing the top 10 (#11) in the UK.

Modern day classics like 505 and Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? are weak sellers, at over 500,000 and 740,000 units, respectively.

These surprising numbers are due to a strong incompatibility between Arctic Monkeys' consumers and iTunes users.

The band always pushed their LP formats, from their very first album, long before vinyls got hyped again.

As mentioned, their best markets weren't the most favorable to sell downloads or ringtones either.

Last but not least, many of their songs got viral on TikTok lately, but most TikTok users never used iTunes, this is a completely different generation.

Thanks to their consistent catalog they still moved over 13 million digital units.

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 * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
• Japan: AWA streams * 68 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market, and 32% are already considered through Spotify’s extrapolation)
• Arabic world: Anghami streams
• Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
• Elsewhere: Spotify streams * 649 / 406 (649 million subscribers of global platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, etc. against 406 million from Spotify itself) + Genie streams * 2.20 (uses Genie rather than Spotify to extrapolate markets like Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam)

Video Streams

• China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
• Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms

*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.

Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit

Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * 649/406 + Genie * 2.20 * 2 + AWA * 68 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750

Top Hits

Their album sales were already quite good, but it's with streaming that Arctic Monkeys' results get amazing.

Their first 17 songs came out between 2006 and 2013, in other words, before the boom of the streaming market.

Yet, they all post impressive figures. Do I Wanna Know? leads the way with close to 1.5 billion streams on Spotify and 2 billion on YouTube. It equals to 1.9 million EAS.

Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? is runner up with nearly a billion streams on Spotify, and 1.1 million EAS. Both hits came out off AM.

An even bigger shocker is 505. This non-single from 2007 stands at 847 million streams on Spotify, making it one of the biggest album cuts of all-time. It continues to grow, being comfortably Top 100 with over 1.5 million daily streams on Spotify charts right now.

It's not enough to make it their top track at the moment, as I Wanna Be Yours is gaining 2.2 million streams a day. Up to 650 million in total, it's another monster album cut.

Their catalog is full of such legacy tracks that became streaming beasts. Fluorescent Adolescent, Mardy Bum, or R U Mine? are more examples of it.

The album AM has 6 tracks out of 12 with at least 330 million streams on Spotify and 250 million on YouTube. It's also the oldest one which puts all its tracks at 100 million or more on Spotify.

These Dark Side Of The Moon-esque statistics bring it to 6.53 million EAS, far and away their top record.

On a more negative note, all tracks which got big are from the same 3 albums, their first two plus AM.

Their most recent efforts Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The Car are much weaker. The latter still have time to grow though, while the former will need a new viral track. We can never exclude this possibility when it's about the Arctic Monkeys.

Full catalog breakdown

You are familiar with the artist’s catalog and want to check details of each and every song? You can access all of them right here.

Keep yourself up to date

Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetchs updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!

Arctic Monkeys compilations sales

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 Live At The Royal Albert Hall, these figures mean it sold 105,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 7,354,552 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 AM album are responsible for 63% of Live At The Royal Albert Hall track list attractiveness. This means it generated 66,000 of its 105,000 album sales and so forth for the other records. We then apply this process to all compilations present on the table.

Compilations sales figures listing

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. 

These numbers are obtained by applying the method from the section The distribution process to all packages listed under Compilation sales figures listing category.

Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.

Arctic Monkeys Career CSPC Results

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by the Arctic Monkeys achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!

Albums CSPC results

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The comparison to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon from the streaming section may seem absurd, but it's not at all.

In fact, the 1973 album sold over 43 million thanks to nearly 50 years of heavy sales. That album had sold 26 million units by 1993, two decades after its release. It took nearly 5 years to hit 10 million sales.

AM is now comfortably cracking a million sales every year. Its total stands at 11 million, and rather than slowing down, it is accelerating.

In recent weeks, it has been top 10 or top 20 in many countries, even outpeaking its original release performance in Sweden.

If not Dark Side, AM is at least the Tubular Bells or Bat Out Of Hell of its generation. The question is, how long will it be able to continue this amazing ride?

It's not the lone release to enjoy outstanding success right now. Their debut is now over 6.3 million, while the sophomore effort is up to 5.4 million.

To give some perspective, these 6.3 million, 5.4 million and 11.1 million sellers were up to 4.7 million, 3.2 millio, and 5.7 million by mid-2018.

It means that AM sold nearly as much in the last 4 years as it did in its first 5, or that Favourite Worst Nightmare may do more from 2018 to 2023 than it did in its first 11 seasons. Unbelievable.

Obviously, numbers for the last two albums are not good at all, but again, who would bet against the Arctic Monkeys to reverse the situation? After all, similar releases Humbug and Suck It And See will soon become multi-million sellers.

Overall, the band registers 28.8 million sales. It won't be long until they hit 30 million.

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. 2013 - Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know? [AM] - 3,390,000
2. 2007 - Arctic Monkeys - 505 [Favourite Worst Nightmare] - 1,920,000
3. 2013 - Arctic Monkeys - Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High? [AM] - 1,900,000
4. 2012 - Arctic Monkeys - R U Mine? [AM] - 1,470,000
5. 2004 - Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor [Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not] - 1,450,000
6. 2007 - Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent [Favourite Worst Nightmare] - 1,370,000
7. 2006 - Arctic Monkeys - When the Sun Goes Down [Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not] - 1,260,000
8. 2013 - Arctic Monkeys - I Wanna Be Yours [AM] - 1,210,000

If you feel inspired by this list, we just created this CSPC Arctic Monkeys playlist on Spotify!

Discography results

Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we know that their sales represent 9.42 million times the purchase of their entire discography. Coupled with their total sales, it translates into an ASR score of 93.

The ranking of all artists studied so far is available too at this link.

Records & Achievements

• At 11,069,000 EAS, AM is the 5th most successful album from 2013.
• At 6,530,000 EAS from streams, AM is the most streamed album from 2013.
• Released in 9/9/2013, AM is the oldest album which has all its songs over 100 million streams on Spotify.
• At 2,652,000 EAS from streams, Favourite Worst Nightmare is the 3rd most streamed album from 2007.
• At 1,853,000 EAS from streams, Whatever People Say I Am That's What I Am Not is the 4th most streamed album from 2006.

NB: EAS means Equivalent Album Sales.

Dynamic Spotify Key Performance Indicators

Please note that numbers below are retrieved automatically, so they will evolve day by day unlike previously listed data which is valid as of the publication date of the article.

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As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs.

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