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I think 'Un Verano Sin Ti' is a safe bet for the biggest album of the 2020s decade. It will be at 20 million units by the end of next year. By the end of the decade it could be at 30M+. What's most extraordinary is that there is no standout hit, instead the Latin audience is streaming the ENTIRE album as if it's a Greatest Hits collection. Every single track has the streaming stats of a hit record. It's unbelievable. He's an MJ/Beatles-esque phenomenon in the Spanish speaking world.
It's fascinating how much the industry has changed on a global level thanks to streaming. And the concept of the studio album, once thought dead, has come roaring back too with many artists not even bothering to promote singles until after the LP has dropped.
Agreed. The digital download age was all about singles and single sales and it ruined the studio album format, but streaming has really brought it back to life. Although I'm not a fan of artists releasing 20-25 track albums just to inflate streaming numbers/sales. I love me a good 10-12 track album.
He is a massive phenomenon in Latin America and his music has probably reached more individuals in the last year in Spanish speaking countries alone than most artists during their peaks, global or not, could ever dream of. You can't go to a party or club without hearing a dozen or so Bad Bunny songs. He is constantly on the radio and has dominated local streaming charts since the album was released. To put it in perspective, he literally has 4.4 million listeners from Mexico City in Spotify alone and nearly 600 million Youtube streams during the last 12 months. Once you combine all other services you are probably talking about at least five and a half million active listeners during the last thirty days in a single city. He is dominating in the markets his music is geared towards and that is truly all that matters. It is ridiculous to expect him to break into the Asian, Australian, or African markets.
honestly, i feel like the streams formula for units is pretty flawed. would love to see that being changed in the future. ain't no way +10B streams on spotify/youtube should equal to +10M units of albums sold. it comes across as an illusion rather than a true figure.
Un Verano Sin Ti spend 13 weeks at #1, was the #1 album on the B200 YEC, includes like six smash hits and broke streaming records across Latin America. If there’s an album which deserves to cross the 10 million equivalent units threshold in the streaming era this fast it is UVST. Those touring figures speak for themselves. If anything, in my opinion, UVST’s success reaffirmed how accurate the streaming formula is. Perhaps his music is not for you and that’s why the albums success seems pretty surprising. Thankfully there’s data available to back up those figures. I would understand wanting to change the streaming formula if this was a common occurrence, but it isn’t and UVST is clearly a 2022 streaming phenomenon.
When album sales were the main consumption method, 10 millions were easily achievable for the top records in a calendar year. UVST is by far the top album of 2022 and nobody else is doing remotely close numbers, if it was easy to achieve there would be more competition.
In Bad bunny's case he is already getting his sales a bit downplayed because of revenue difference in latin countries compared to US and other top music markets. I just find hilarious the system is flawed when a non english speaking artist dominates.
Extremely embarrassing then that so many global superstars haven't been able to outstream local artist Bad Bunny on Spotify for the last three years and will probably never reach the heights of UVST. Maybe they should try to be more local like him.
Badbunny has sold over 3million in the U.S. and he does 3X the numbers globally. 10 million makes sense.
UVST is such a fast climber. 11.5M units already. I hope it ends the year with 15M 🙂 that'd be amazing. It also has to crack 18M to surpass Laundry Service as the best selling latin album of the century I believe
I wouldn't consider Laundry Service a proper Latin album. Correct me if I'm wrong but UVST should be the biggest of the century already. The overall spot is probably held by Luis Miguel or Julio Iglesias. Not sure how close UVST is to these since we haven't studied them, but at this rate I can see it topping these too in the long run.
Yeah I wouldn't consider Laundry Service a full on latin album either but I mentioned it in case there's any Shakira fan, to avoid getting people mad lol.
It is also close to being #1 on the building decade-end chart, how satisfying
Also correct me if I'm wrong but maybe it has surpassed any Luis Miguel album too (?) I believe his best selling album is Romance at 10 million CSPC or something like that but i'm not really the best at estimating album sales for old albums hahah
