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Hi Clockingbell!
I don't think we can put Beyonce in the same spot as Eminem. The fact that Halo is now bigger than Single Ladies isn't a reflection that something changed due to streams, but that instead the release sequence during the downloads years flawed the results.
On surface, SL does look much bigger, with #1 peaks and such. It preceeded the album yet, back then it was just the norm that pre-album release singles would peak higher, just because there was no competition from the album. The way Halo sold nearly as many downloads as SL despite getting released after the album reveals it was already very strong. Basically, SL was (of course) stronger in 2008, but from the release of Halo, it has always been the most popular track of her catalog. Firstly because it was the new single, and then because it retained a higher popularity, in early 10s this was already the most downloaded track week after week, and in early Spotify years it was the most streamed too (by mid-2014, it had 67.7m streams against 40.3m for SL).
The same is true for a track like Here Comes the Sun. Many Beatles' songs were popular with heavy airplay, the absence of a physical single is more a technicality than a conclusion. In 1971, the song was already an hot 100 top 20 hit with a random cover by Richie Havens, I'll let you imagine where the original by the Beatles would have charted if it had been issued. In 1976, Steve Harley got to the UK top 10 with another cover. On mediabase numbers revealing US airplay from 1997 to 2007, Sun was on a virtual tie with Come Together and Let It Be as the most aired track, easily higher songs like Hey Jude, Yesterday or Something. Here too streaming barely highlighted something that has been true for much longer although no sales KPI were available to reveal it, that Here Comes The Sun is one of their catalog's strongest assets.
The same is true for Wish You Were Here, which was a radio single even if it had no physical release, on Mediabase 25 years ago it was Floyd's second biggest track already, only topped by Comfortably Numb.
The real outlier is 'Till I Collapse which gained ground quickly in spite of really not been promoted at first. It was heavily popular as an album cut upon release still, which led it to be used in many ads, TV shows, sports events, etc. History will remember that Call of Duty made it big, but as often it's a media shortcut. When Eminem made the news in April 2006, years before Call of Duty, 'Till I Collapse was the 6th strongest song from his catalog already, and Call of Duty ended making it a top 3 track from his catalog in 2009, something that is visible with streaming numbers too.
In the article, Halo seems to grow somewhat later, but thanks for the explanation! But if Here Comes the Sun was aired on a par with Let it be and Come Together, and Wish You Were Here topped by Comfortably Numb, tracks they now outstream by a great margin, changes in the long run do affect the method, don't they?
"The real outlier is ‘Till I Collapse which gained ground quickly in spite of really not been promoted at first."
How is this different than 2Pac's Ambitionz Az A Ridah and All Eyez On Me ?
Another obvious example is Queen's Don't Stop Me Now, their 2nd most streamed song even though it was only a minor hit at the time.
As for Halo, I think it can be compared with Till I Collapse in the sense that it's clearly not the main reason people bought the album but now it has more streams than Single Ladies and If I Were A Boy combined !
Also, do you have any information about the airplay of songs like Here Comes The Sun or Wish You Were Here back in the 70s ? I know Pink Floyd released Have A Cigar as a single, it'd be interesting to know which song from that album had the most airplay.
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?
