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Hi again Randomname!
Video streams are way, way less relevant than audio streams. They gross much less to the industry. They are also poorly tracked, e.g. largely corrupted by mass multi-streams through various windows and they count plays from second 1, etc. If you open 10 tabs and hit Ctrl+Shift then F5 fast, you can give a video tons and tons of streams in a minute. There is many fans who do cheat to inflate these counts, while audio streams numbers are limited to 1 play per user every 30 seconds. That's why we can't give the same value to both.
As for SK downloads, the point has been discussed multiple times already. While they are indeed cheaper than elsewhere (although nowhere near as cheap as often claimed), they also cannibalize album sales stronger than elsewhere, which balances it out. Now a super successful single can be downloaded 2 million times, worth 300,000 EAS, back in the 90s an album with a super successful single was selling 300,000 units too, so that's fine.
That's also why the gap of ratio between physical and digital singles is only 2 to 1 (0,15 EAS and 0,3 EAS), because while there was a near 4 to 1 gap in price, the download eats album sales nearly as much, so we need to put the factor in the middle, to account for both the revenue and how it impacted sales of remaining formats!
I think "Single Ladies" is eligible for 9xPlatinum in the US with downloads + ringtones + streams and "Halo" for 8xPlatinum and "Irreaplaceable" for Diamond, is it correct?
Ringtones were certified separatedly. About Single Ladies and Halo, yes. Irreplaceable doesn't. It has at most 3.6M and its streams is not so great. The Irreplaceable's 3 Million ringtones aren't include in these certifications.
Uhmmm okay, thanks. So, Irreplaceable is eligible for 6x Platinum at least, I think
Irreplaceable has 200M on Spotify and 320M on YouTube. Judging its performance on charts and popularity around the World it's resonable calculate 60%-65% coming from US. Probably you're right. 7x Platinum is Very possible too
SO what would be your estimation for the certifications of Crazy In Love, Halo, and Single Ladies??
Crazy In Love - 5x Platinum
Halo - 8x Platinum
Single Ladies - 9x Platinum
But with The recent ratio's changes on Billboard I'm not so right about.
Hi MJD!
Great article as always. I read an article recently regarding Beyoncé and streaming and was wondering what your thoughts are about it. The article is here: https://trackrecord.net/beyonces-lemonade-is-still-a-tidal-exclusive-did-it-he-1816210416
The writer suggests that Beyoncé "lost" hundreds of thousands of equivalent album sales in 2016 in the US alone by only releasing Spotify on Tidal rather than all streaming platforms. His reasoning is very questionable since as we know sales in one format divert sales away from others (he actually acknowledges this point but doesn't factor it in his calculations) but I wonder whether his conclusion is correct, if not to the extent he suggests.
As you covered in the article Lemonade's album and single sales were boosted by the lack of streaming availability, but is it likely that over time, its residual album and single sales won't make up for what it loses in streaming? Virtually everyone in her core fanbase has bought the album already, and many of them will keep streaming it on Tidal, but casual listeners are increasingly only streaming music, and it seems unlikely that they'd switch their streaming service just to listen to Lemonade.
I realise it's sort of a hypothetical question but since she and Jay-Z are among the very few high-profile modern acts who still withhold albums from Spotify, I'm interested in your insight.
Hi Orange!
The article is indeed strongly uneducated and calculations don't hold at all against real facts. It states that with 2 to 1 SPS to sales ratio the album would have done 3,1 million - but if it was available on streams, it would have sold most likely about half a million less, so that same 2 to 1 ratio would conclude on 2,1-ish million, the same number it did.
To me it's fairly clear that Lemonade hasn't lost sales during 2016 once considering all formats. From 2017 though, when catalog streams become so much larger than sales, then yes it started losing SPS units. It's visible when you break down Views and Lemonade per period. The latter did 55% of the former during 2016, which sounds good in comparison to their relative success. Since then though, Views gained nearly 1,3 million in 2017/2018, against over 400k for Lemonade. It remains inside the Top 100 pure sales albums of 2018, which shows its sales are still fueled by the lack of availability on Spotify and the likes, but considering the state of the market it isn't enough anymore to match an album with consistent streams. That being said, had it done 55% of Views in 2017/2018, that would mean under 300k SPS units lost to date, which isn't *that* much relatively speaking.
Of course, one may argue the album should have done more than 55% of Views already in 2016. Why am I convinced it is wrong? Lemonade debuted with less than 63% of Views' first week sales. As you can guess, pure sales are much more immediate than streaming points (see Adele vs Ed Sheeran article), so that 63% in SPS units represents less in terms of popularity. Additionaly, Views late singles performed much better (its 4th/5th sold 1,3m together, the ones of Lemonade 700k, in spite of the lack of streams for them). Thus we can see that the 55% ratio for Lemonade doesn't deflate its success at all, it had to be expected considering the debut of both albums, their promotion and the mechanics of each format.
Hi MJD!
Thanks so much for your explanation!
The logic used in the article definitely isn't sound at all, and his conclusion of 900k lost sales (in just the US in 2016!) sounded completely ridiculous to me. 300k over 2 years sounds a lot more realistic, and is definitely not too major compared to Lemonade's overall total, but I suppose we could expect that (hypothetical) gap to continue to increase as streaming becomes even stronger and pure sales weaker, right?
The fact that the Carters eventually chose to release Everything is Love on Spotify makes me think that they recognise that they stand to profit more in the long-run from streaming than sales.
Yes orange, that's right! One element I haven't mention is obviously the gross. One can wonder if they are losing sales why they continue that way, but Jay-Z owns Tidal so they don't need to get as many sales to gross more. I pointed out realistically 300k lost, that's 10%. Had it been available everywhere, over 50% of these close to 3 million hypothetical total would come from streams. A small illustration with numbers to understand the point keeping in mind streaming platforms give back 70% of the gross to the industry:
Case 1 - wide availability
Pure sales: 1,4m SPS - 20% profit
Downloads: 300k SPS - 20% profit
Streaming: 1,3m SPS - 20% of 70% - 20% of 910k SPS
The album sold 3 million SPS, they got their share of royalties on the equivalent of 2,61 million of them.
Case 2 - Tidal only
Pure sales: 1,9m SPS - 20% profit
Downloads: 500k SPS - 20% profit
Streaming: 300k SPS - 20% of 100% - 20% of 300k SPS
The album sold 2,7 million SPS, they got their share of royalties on the equivalent of 2,7 million of them.
I took a standard (for big artists) of 20% of royalties, truth is Beyoncé released Lemonade under her own Parkwood Entertainment label. Columbia took money for distribution purpose, but on Tidal she got most of the money for herself and the remaining producers of the album. An independent artist that gets 300k SPS from a premium-only streaming platform that he owns earns the same as a random artist paid at 15% that gets 5 million SPS from streams on a freemium tier service, since he earns 15% of the 70% reversed to him and that half of the users don't pay. I simplified to death numbers, but you can see the point!
Now you can understand that the fact that they produced their albums and were owners of Tidal made it more profitable for them longer than any other artist to avoid Spotify and the likes. That time is over even for them though which shows how streaming platforms are dominante right now - which isn't surprising since in the first semester of 2018 they represented 75% of the US music industry gross!
Halo doesn't have 1 billion views on YouTube, it's lacking 300 million views to reach it on the official video
Hi Viewer!
We do not only track the main official video. Every video that isn't a cover is accounted for, we only exclude manga-like movies on which the music isn't the prime attraction. Halo has a 198-million views lyrics video for example!
How much of a difference do you think the ratio of Spotify/Apple music affects these calculations? Like, isn't it crazy that Beyonce's ST received more plays on Apple Music in 2018 than Taylor Swift's Reputation (who is said to do much better on Apple than Spotify)?
