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Airplay have their favorites, it's not because Numb was higher than Wish on airplay that it was a bigger sales incentive. High airplay rankings suggests songs have been widely well known for long, but not exactly how well they convert. A random example, Rock With You has nearly twice as many airplay as Billie Jean, and obviously the later is the most efficient 'seller'.
About Halo, and there I answer to Analord too, it's a combination of bias that we have. The first biased view we have is that we tend to believe that singles charts reflect the biggest singles. It's mostly true with streaming, it wasn't at all in the past. Singles sales were deeply dependent on album sales, and while hits like Don't Stop Believin' looked weak, they simply supported album sales rather than selling cheap singles. Our second strong bias is the US-centric view. In this case, Single Ladies charted much higher in the US. In many countries yet, right from the start and in spite of a later release (so with more consumers already owning the album), Halo still out-peaked SL. It has been true in the UK, in most European countries, in Asia, etc.
At the end of the day, the "SL was much stronger than Halo" perception was mostly due to the Hot 100. Then, even there, Boy charted for 20 weeks, SL for 27, Halo for 31 weeks, so the stronger hold of Halo was there right from the start.
The album also peaked higher during Halo's months than during SL's boost in these places. As for sales, the album shipped about 3m in both 2008 and 2009, the rest later on. As a good part of 2008 sales were under If I Were A Boy, it would be easy to conclude that it's the song which powered the highest number of sales, it also peaked high in many places. It's wrong though, this was the comeback single hence the good peaks, and we can't simply consider that 3m people bought the album thanks to the single, the fanbase, relevant due to sales of its predecessors, was going to pick the album anyway. Saying that Boy was a bigger album seller than Halo back then, would be claiming that had Halo been the lead single, the album would have been shipped under 3m by the end of 2008, which I seriously doubt. To sum up, Boy had the most hype as the lead, SL the most buzz due to the theme, but tons of metrics suggest Halo was the biggest single already in 2009. As I said, if even in the only country where SL peaked so much better, it ended up selling not that much more downloads than Halo, while coming first, it shows very well which song had the highest strength.
About your last question Clockingbell, of course changes happen through the years, but we tend to widely exaggerate them for all the reasons I mention here. As we had next to no KPI apart from original chart peaks, which are mostly bad indicators rather than anything else, our views used to be biased. In the large majority of cases, the most streamed songs now were the most popular tracks before Spotify kicked in, streams highlighted the reality rather than distorting it. Don't Stop Believin' has been Journey's most efficient single for very long, from way before the Sopranos. Tracks which get boosts thanks to popular culture did so because they were popular off the radar, and I deeply believe that they were much stronger at converting interest into sales with the same amount of airplay well before the GP started to see them as big hits. All Journey singles got boosts here and there, as every popular track, and when they did, albums like Escape or GH got boosts, so sales themselves used to reflect these evolutions too. And now, streams do consider all these historical boosts, that's precisely why they do not reflect the initial chart peaks, because they reflect the organic popularity of a catalog which evolved through the years.
Hi Analord!
I haven't speak about Ridah, I simply missed it. It's another good example, same as DSMN, although for that one I would disagree with the "minor" hit tag, again because we can't simply look at peaks from leads and later singles, especially with a Christmas season in-between.
I'm confused... You don't think Halo is the main reason people bought her album, right ? When it became a hit the album had already sold around 3.5m (after 2 singles) and when Halo started falling off the album had sold around 4m... The rest of its sales mostly occurred during the next year or so, on the back of minor hits + the continued popularity of the first hits (Single Ladies being the main one).
Depends on how you define "the main reason people bought her album". I prefer to be precise, as you use to misquote people. If the question is, is Halo the single which powered the most IASF sales, I would say that it's a difficult question, but that it's the most likely contender indeed.
Before allocating sales, I'll fix one data, the album moved more than 500k during Halo's promotion. The album shipped 3m units in 2009, and Halo's quarter was its strongest. To be conservative, let's consider the album moved 3.5m before Halo and 4.25m by its end, 750k sales.
What we are left with? Of course on surface it seems SL / IIWAB were bigger. Out of the 3.5m sold under these two singles though, considering her previous sales, she would have got at the very, very, very least 1.5 million units shipped / sold no matter how the first single sounded, so 'only' 2m can be attributed to SL/IIWAB, we keep making it simple and say each fueled 1m sales.
Among remaining songs, only Sweet Dreams had some kind of impact, although lower, say it moved half a million albums, same for remaining singles.
There are still 7.6 - 4.25 - 0.5 - 0.5 = 2.35 million sales achieved later on thanks to previously released singles. You claim that SL was the main one, this is obviously wrong. In each airplay / sales / streams, Halo has been outdoing largely SL ever since coming out, and it has always been a stronger "converter", as it's often the case with ballads. It was also more recent and with a stronger lasting impact by late 2009, so the gap between Halo and IIWAB/SL was actually fairly bigger than it is now. From these 2.35m sales, anything under 1m coming from that song would be a huge deflation. At the end of the day we stand with 1.75m sales coming from this song, with very pessimistic guesses, while SL would be close to that number (1m+ early + half a million later on). In a more realistic way, I would expect Halo to be in the 2m-2.5m ballpark.
Just a last word, it's quite clear giving your comments that you are sticking to a US-centric view. IASF was up to 60k before Halo in Brazil, then that song topped charts for 18 weeks there and the album had quadrupled its sales. By now, it's at 360k, with at least 250k coming from Halo. This is Brazil alone, while you suggest that Halo powered only about half a million globally. Spotify isn't a US platform. Numbers aren't explained by US charts. It takes to check everything to draw valid conclusions.
Stats are not as bad as I expected honestly. Great work from Chartmasters as always.
Why would you expect bad stats? She is one of the most popular and successful artists ever.
You may be right that most popular tracks were always most popular, but due to the playlists on Spotify, I see the biggest tracks having a bigger lead over their competition than during the digital age. Combined with the airplay that was different, it makes me believe that especially acts with a signature song have their sales more towards that song than realistic at the time of release.
Renaissance has been on repeat the whole day. It’s crazy she is still raising to raise the bar and take herself on a completely new sonically journey this far into her career.
RIAA updated Beyoncé’s certifications.
Albums - 29.5M
Singles - 113.5M
Total US certifications - 143M
Now Beyoncé is the 3rd most certified female artist of all time (6th overall).
Note. Halo and Single Ladies both are 9x Platinum. The Diamonds are coming!!!
A TRUE LEGEND!!!!!
she still seems under-certified. DIL is at 5M pure copies and song sales and streaming only account for 1M more? Also Billboard stated that IASF is over 8M units, but just a 6x platinum update?
Definitly yes. I think her team are waiting the Renaissance’s Platinum for update correctly.
Thanks for the great update! Quick question: what is the source for Beyoncé’s Japanese sales?
I am on the RIAJ website and the certifications are way different (considerably lower) from the pure sales.
Can you give me any insight into this? Thanks!
Hi David!
RIAJ certified units only reveal the lowest possible amount for an album.
An album certified platinum could have sold anything between 250k-499k. And that's ignoring digital sales which are certified seperately and assuming it's not outdated.
Oricon numbers (equivalent to US soundscan) paint a more accurate picture.
Hello!
Not sure if a valid question or not, but I noticed some artists who have been in group acts, who have since gone Solo have an all encompassing CSPC update while some others like MJ and Bey have more distinct/separate career updates. Maybe a silly observation but is there a reason as to why? Thanks in advance!
What are the pure sales estimates for Renaissance so far? Has it crossed 1M WW?
Hello! Beyoncé recently updated bunch of her songs and albums certificates in Brazil, will it effect numbers here?
2.1m for Renaissance from streams, very nice! I'm hoping America Has a Problem and the visuals can keep streams high.
Anyway, any idea at where its at in pure sales? Has it crossed 3m CSOC yet?
halo and single ladies have 9 million by riaa in the united states alone, how come on this list both don't even have 10 million worldwide sales?
Can you update her sales? These are very old.
IASF has crossed 20.8 Million Units WW, BDAY 14.5 Million Units WW.
That’s what I don’t understand. It has sold 9M in the United States, according to Billboard it has crossed 38.8 Million World Wide. This site is ran by Taylor Swift and Gaga fans. They won’t update it.
I don't think Beyonce has over 80 million digital singles in South Korea. She's not very popular in East Asia, and her equivalent album sales should decrease by at least 12 million
Right? There's literally no reason for Honesty which is allegedly a 10 million seller in the country to be out of her Top 20 on Youtube Korea and have zero impact on local streaming services.
