Hi Stephon!

On my Excel sheets, virtually all figures are filled in. They are of 2 different nature though:
1 - figures backed with certifications / chart runs, for which we can commit into a realistic number
2 - figures that are the result of pure calculations due to the lack of information

While figures from (2) are very realistic more often than not since they are based on a lot of experience and on official market sizes / artist trends, we aren't going to write them down as if we had certifications or so to back them down. Our figures are then used as receipts and people will start claiming they are facts while they are calculations. Let's take B'Day in Argentina. We have 4 ways to gauge its sales there:
- it wasn't certified, meaning it sold under 20k
- DIL did 40k there
- B'Day's sold close to half DIL sales in its worst markets, including latin areas like France, Italy and Spain
- Beautiful Liar performs decently in Argentina as per YouTube Insights

Giving this set of information, it's safe to say that setting B'Day sales at 15k in Argentina can't be too far from the truth. It doesn't change the fact that there is no article / certification / scanning system that points out it sold 15k, so it is better to write N/A to avoid confusion!

Hi HushMoney!

Rather than going into the silly "jealous stans" argument you would better check the remaining updates / all comments from this article 😉

You had ST at 4M (pure), IASF (7.7M) to 3.8M to 7.5M etc is that not a decrease? Your numbers are inconsistent.

You do realize Beyonce isn’t the only artist that ‘lost’ sales, right? Just recently Gaga lost sales as well, and last year Britney lost sales with In the Zone going from 7.4 million to 6.9 million. It’s completely normal for reasons listed above and it has nothing to do with ‘jealous stans’.

Umm...In digital sales,she sold over 4 million with "remaining tracks" in Orphan?That is kind of...

Shaki, there is 50 Orphan tracks among these "remaining" songs, why is it "kind of..."? Some of them sold over 200k in SK alone. What's kind of funny is to see you posting rubbish figures day in day out and then argue against realistic data.

All your recent comments (like that fake DVD claim and the 'order' to correct something that isn't even claimed) are more and more painful to read and considering comments of others, I'm not the only one that is getting seriously bored by your trolling. If you keep spamming all articles with this kind of pointless nonsense I'll start moving your messages into trash.

Thanks for responding to all the post. But i have one more question. Do you know anything about halo brasil sales? Could we kinda get a continent breakdown? Huge fan of the song and very happy with it's success.

Beyonce is one of the most undercertified artist in recent years. In US for example she is about 50 platinum missing if we count streams. Same in Brazil. Maybe in several countries. Sometimes is hard to predict her sales and she may have sold more than she looks

I'm not mad at these figures. It's closer than what mediatraffic and other bias sources quote. What I love about Bey is she still has the populairty to sell records over time while others have been stalled for a decade. She can reach 100 million solo if she goes back mainstream.

I am Sasha Fierce is so far the best selling album by a black female artist this century. Halos catalog sales are truly amazing. I'm also glad the DC vs Bey debate can be put to rest. Much stronger results overall by herself.

Definitely. I think if she ever does a massive it will effect the estimations.
Plus media sites only go by certifications as records sold so it would help her there.

Irreplaceable is at 8 mi being fair, not 11.

6,700,000 in US/CAN ringtones/downloads
~650,000 UK
~100,000 Oceania
~100,000 The rest of Europe

Giving it another 500k (where i don't know but let's try), maybe it'll reach the 8 million mark that i'm assuming.

Where u found another 3 million sales for this track? lol

Hi Teca!

I'm sure you realize your figures are way off! Plus, I'm sure too you are aware that you are leaving out all ringtones outside North America!

As posted previously on comments, it is on 7,4m DLs+RTs in the US alone plus around 200k in Canada. Your figure of 6,7m barely reach US Soundscan sales (3,65m) plus certified ringtones (3m in the US, 40k in Canada) while the track was still going strong on RTs by its last certs, and then there is still Canadian downloads to add.

Ironically, your figure for the UK is way too high, it sold 460k there. It reaches 650k with streams. The figure of 100k for Europe isn't realistic at all. It did 155k in France+Germany+Italy and these countries represented barely more than half of continental Europe downloads by then (49,4m against 42,3m elsewhere in 2007). All these figures leave out RTs. For example in France they were in proportion 3 times stronger than in the US by then. In total, we are looking at 600k digital sales in continental Europe, 1,1m with the UK and its RTs (which were weaker but still good enough to be estimated on 40k).

The same goes in Oceania: 125k downloads in Oz, 100k RTs as per market sizes / Beyoncé's patterns there, then add NZ at 11% of Oz, you get 250k for the region. The market in Latin America was bigger than Australia by 2007 and much more favorable to RTs. Beyoncé did very well there as we know and her prime format was huge. While we would like more data to back up calculations, they put the song on more than 400k for the region.

Then comes Asia. In SK alone, Irreplaceable sold over 400k from 2010 to 2012. The DLs / RTs share by 2007 was exactly the same in SK than in the US (33/23%s in SK against 40/27%s in the US). Of course, we would prefer to avoid assuming some 1,5m+ sales there with only 400k properly documented, but the fact is that's way more realistic than assuming 0 download pre-2010 and post-2013 and 0 ringtone since its release there. It was huge too in Japan. You may think that it wasn't certified there: it is true, but for Ringtones the first criteria was as high as 500k and that included only one kind of the 2 ringtones.

7,4m in NA
400k in LA
1,1m in Europe
250k in Oceania
2m in Asia

We get 11,1m, the same result as with automatic formulas, the same ones which are used for all acts!

Beyonce's commercial selling ability is massively overrated by her fanbase and disproportionate to her overall popularity and media coverage. Beyonce is similar to Justin Timberlake in the fact that she's a bigger celebrity from the music industry than she is an actual music star.

'I am Sasha Fierce' era truly feels like her commercial peak rather than her 'Dangerously in Love ' era. 8 million albums sold in 2008 is rather impressive especially for a urban/black musical act who has a limited interest outside of US/UK.

Hi...

First, I want to say that I love your site because it is the only one that can throw us doubts and break myths that are spread by the pop communities around the planet... But, honestly, I notice huge mistakes in your notes when we talk about Beyoncé. For a long time, many people have (specifically Britney and Rihanna stans) known your favoritism, demeaning great artists (like this charge you put here:
?zz=1, in last Beyoncé article) - and much more talented ones who basic singers who shake your ass with an army of dancers for the thousandth time and be acclaimed for doing more of the same - Britney / Gaga / Rihanna is commom.

Everyone already got it, let it for another conversation, another time.

OT: Back to Irreplaceable sales, I do not know how long I was laughing about your reply, because basically you invented 3 million ghost sales for this song, proving what I had said.

Let's deny what you said, with respect:

It won't at 7,4m DLs+RTs in the US, 7m is the greatest thing we can use for that figures:

6,7m in US (D+R)
Let's put 100k for Canadian rigtones and downloads (the last one,
the latter being a guess rounded up, since the downloads in 2006/07 were incredibly small in this market and in many others) since it doesn't appear on the year-end Canadian HOT 100.

We're att 6,8m.

Using your 460k data, and ignoring the fact that you invented more than 600,000 copies in Europe, where that song went from bad to worse. We are going to show that getting top 10 in many countries did not guarantee enough stability to have decent positions, check it out:

More than two months on the charts, look at the misery that it was in 2006 European YEC biggest markets:

#29 UK
(#88 Sweden and #96 Switzerland, if you consider their markets relevant, i don't)

Now let's see the 2007 YEC, with the whole year to enter the lists:

Germany: #79
France: OUT
Italy: #53
UK: OUT of the top 100 (at #120)
Netherlands: #99 ( again, if you consider this market relevant, i don't)

This shows how ridiculous was the stability in any country on the planet except the United States, the only place where this song was an undeniable hit.

After all these facts, to say that this song sold 1.1m in Europe is to want to make fun of the reader's face and "600k digital sales in continental Europe"
looking at the year-end positions and without the uk is a joke, it's at 600k, maybe 700k, being frank, in that continent.

The same error stays in Australia, it was certified platinum (70k) by 2007, but you put it at 225k for reasons of having arrived at the top of there, but it stayed atop for only one week, then fall, - not talking about it having stayed in the top 10 for JUST 12 weeks (a real success stays the same time at the top) - check it out: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/23790/20080120-0000/issue931EOY.pdf

If we lower our position by the smallest position on the end-of-year charts, we would have Irreplaceable at # 19, position where a song rarely goes from third platinum as the Australian download industry was starting and ringtones dying. Probably adding ringtones and downloads, it has 150k being grateful.

And no, Irreplaceable didn't sell 25k in New Zealand. It was at the top for only a week and figured on the chart for only 18 weeks. It also did not appear on the year-end lists, neither in 2006 nor in 2007, proving failure outside of North America.

"The market in Latin America was bigger than Australia by 2007 and much more favorable to RTs."... another big lie. The market in Latin America was always poor, small, the ringtones barely sell back in day (still selling barely nothing, in Brazil with 2k/week you get the number one in digital chart in this days, i'm talking it cause i live in this continent and in 2007 this was no different), 400k for the region? Joke. You can not invent numbers, especially in regions of irrelevant numbers, and want to be credibiliful on to the reader. You haven't the receipts, if have, show me.

And one more time, it won't breakout Asia market. This didn't happen in Japan. This has gone smoothly. Pulling numbers from 400k - in SK, the only place that has relevant and probable numbers in Asia - to 2m is an incredible lie and again, you will not have receipts to answer me.

Again. This didn't happen in Japan (didn't even enter the chart there).

Correct numbers are:

6,8m US/CAN
600/700k EUROPE
160k in OCEANIA
500k in ASIA

We're at 8,1/8,2 million worldwide.

But I must be wrong and you right, the other 3 million came from the Antarctic Islands or Africa... lol

Teca,

What's the point of answering if you contradict every available data grossly denying the facts? Your figures basically assume 0 sale since every certification happened, it's plain stupid. How can it be at 6,8m in NA with 3,65m SS downloads and 3m RTs by July 2007 already? Do you think the track stopped selling suddenly when Beyoncé sold past a million ringtones in the US even with pre-digital era songs? In SK, have you miss the part that 400k are its sales for 2010-2012 only? It wasn't a one-off splash, it sold this number by shifting 5 to 10k every week, there is no reason to assume it was doing 0 before and 0 after. In Japan, here too pre-digital era songs sold 500k+ and with metrics like YouTube Insights showing Irrepleaceable is fairly popular as well. You speak about "inventing numbers", you are the one inventing 0 sale everywhere with wild claims like "regions of irrelevant numbers" while I'm quite simply using IFPI official data. I can go on and on and on.

You already did similar absurd messages some 18 months ago, ignoring in full Asian sales, ignoring all ringtones outside the US, ignoring in full catalog sales and using physical charts from Europe to argue the song hasn't sold well in downloads. Chart runs for downloads from 2006/2007 are pointless. The market was such a tiny fragment of what it became in early 10s that being a good catalog seller resulted into much bigger sales than performing well initially. Repeating a nonsense it will not make it true, that's not how it works.

Last but not least, as soon as you start a message assuming someone else is a "stan" (especially when I'm known for very long for not being a Bey stan at all), you are barely flagging yourself as a fanatic.