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You’re right she passed her golden years she is more than 15 years in her solo career and her commercial peak was during I am Sasha fierce 10 years ago
Hey! I just found all of the Dreamgirls and Cadillac Records tracks in the Orphan section on Page 17,
Hello do you think beyoncé homecoming and the gift flopped? Because i see a lot of people saying that but ariana grande live album and taylor swift movie's songs did worse
At least she's still kicking on her own terms though. Music careers and accomplishments aren't entirely centered on one aspect.
Hey MJD! Where would HOMECOMING: The Live Album be classified?
The Orphan Album section? Or using your usual greatest hits method where each track is added to the parent album it comes from?
Hi Chartmasters crew, thank you for this amazing article. I was wondering if you have any data on African sales and how Beyonce ranks among foreign artists there. I know on her heatmap many African countries were among her best and I have heard she is very succesful there and was wondering how she compared to her peers, local and all-time bestselling acts. Any help would be appreciated thanks.
I dont think its possible, bcoz if im not mistaken many African coubtries doesnt even have a music body. So her sales are probably not properly recorded. But as u have mentioned, she must have been really2 huge in Africa. I guess its easier for R&B acts to break into African markets compared to Pop acts.
Hi MJD,
I'm a big fan of Beyoncé, and despite of your explanation, I'm having an extremely hard time making sense of her digital singles sales. Take the 'Irreplaceable' case: if its US sales stand now at 3.7 million, the ratio between her alleged worldwide sales to US sales is 3. This is an usually high ratio for a single that was prominently bigger in the US than in the rest of the world. The matter gets trickier when we analyze her IASF figures. There is no reliable source that backs the huge numbers reported for 'If I Were A Boy', 'Single Ladies' and 'Halo'. Out of those 3, only SL made the IFPI top 10 in 2009, with a very modest sum of 4,7 million. We know that 'Halo' is a monster recurrent hit and SL had its share of appreciation throughout the years, but to get to the numbers mentioned here these songs would have to sell in their recurrent years 2x the amount they sold at their prime, which is highly unlikely.
From a quick review, 'Crazy In Love' and 'Listen' also show inexplicable big numbers.
My estimate is that her digital sales figures are overestimated by at least 50%.
What do you think?
Hi Robinson!
As western chart followers we have the bad habit of looking at western download charts only when it comes to digital sales. For album sales, it made sense, North America and Europe often represented well over 80% of sales for international artists. Downloads never took off in continental Europe though, they remained somehow weak in the UK too. And then, there are ringtones, which sold a whole lot more than downloads in many markets.
Irreplaceable did 3.7m in the US, but that's with downloads only. It sold the same number in ringtones, a total of 7.4m US sales, two thirds of the global total. IIWAB is over 4m combined in the US and over a million in Japan and South Korea combined. These countries bring a lot more sales than our usual checks of markets like France or Italy. Halo is at 5.2m in the US and 2.9 million in SK alone. Here too, people will tend to look at the 4.1m US DLs, missing the remaining 4m from these two countries.
Halo did 200,000 units in SK in 2009 out of its near 3 million total. DLs were still in their early stages in years 2006-2009 in many countries, unlike the US, so multiplying the initial sales by 3 or more isn't a surprise, many songs did that. The market in 2012 was over 2 times bigger than in 2006 in the US (1.34b vs 582m), but in Australia for example, it grew by 1000% (from 10.3m to 110m).
Crazy In Love is at 1.25m ringtones, 1m Japanese digital sales and over half a million in SK. Listen did 1.5m units in the latter country alone.
All the singles you mention appear to come from her early years, because ringtones were ridiculously big back then and people tend to completely overlook them. They are also her top selling titles in SK. By 2013 the ringtones market had gone in most countries and she got no new hit in SK, so the numbers shown here are likely more in line with your expectations by looking at western downloads.
I know I'm not MJD but I read somewhere it sold 500k units in 2019! 11 years after release! But I think it was because of a commercial it's in. It also just surpassed the 1 billion mark a few years ago so I would like to know too.
As a big Beyonce fan, I know a lot of us know her sales as "DIL 11 M, 8 M for both B'day and IASF, 3 M for 4, 5 M for self-titled and 3 M for Lemonade." Are these numbers just fanciful, from an unreliable source, or updated? I doubt they're updated cuz she hasn't recertified most of her music since 2010.
It's so incredible. One year later a 2009's song accumulated more 200M streams. A iconic classic.
