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Must have been Shania's Come On Over. The statement was made back in 2017 when her results was first studied.
Hi,MJD!
https://web.archive.org/web/20160718234019/http://www.lanacion.com.ar/212350-la-ilusion-pop
Her first 2 album each sold 120k copies in Argentina by 2002.
Hello Chartmasters admins, can these receipts for Britney's album sales in Argentina please be looked into to see if Britney's figures should be updated?
Thank you for your hard work.
Hi but!
I myself came across new figures from official sources that will be updated very soon. You can be sure we'll look into those Argentinian sales as well. Stay tuned!
Hello MJD and the rest of the hard-working Chartmasters crew.
I have found receipts claiming "Greatest Hits: My Prerogative" to have sold over 1 million copies in Japan, which is what MJD originally estimated for the album. One of the sources is Sony Music Japan.
https://www.sonymusic.co.jp/artist/britneyspears/discography/SICP-4654
"日本ではミリオンセラーを記録した大ヒット・ベスト・アルバム。"
This part translates to "In Japan, it is a blockbuster Best Of album recording a million sales"
The second source is Tower Records Japan.
"アルバムには、数々のヒット曲はもちろん、「マイ・プリロガティヴ」（ボビー・ブラウンのカバー曲）ほか新曲2曲を追加収録して、日本でもミリオン・セールスを記録した。"
This part translates to "In addition to the numerous hits and "My Prelogative" (cover song by Bobby Brown) and two new songs, the album also recorded Million Sales in Japan."
I have also found this receipt claiming the GH:MP DVD to have sold over 1 million copies by 2006. The current estimate it has it at 750k.
"The DVD is being produced by Ann Carli and directed by Jim Swaffield, the same team that did R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" DVD as well as Britney Spears' "Greatest Hits" DVD, which sold more than one million units, and Ciara's "Goodies the Videos and More" DVD."
Can you please look into these and tell me what you think? I believe there might be an under-estimation coming from some Britney.com certification awards not being updated correctly.
Thank you. 🙂
Similarly I have found another statement from Sony Music Japan claiming In the Zone to have topped the 500,000 mark in sales sometime in 2004.
https://www.sonymusic.co.jp/artist/britneyspears/discography/BVBQ-21017
"昨年11月にリリース-されたアルバム『イン・ザ・ゾーン』は、日本国内でも既に50万枚を突破！"
This part says "The album "In the Zone" released last November-has already topped 500,000 copies in Japan!"
Could this be a case of Oricon not being fully comprehensive and leading to some missing sales like it was the case with Soundscan in the 2000s? I would like to hear your opinion on this as well. 🙂
When will you add what you have found and update her album sales. Thank you so much for your work. One last thing before this update your colleague stated that Britney album was at 13 M however you report it at 12m. Why the reduction?
Hey stephen,
I would be really grateful if you could answer my question please. According to jive in 2011 Britney album sold 19 M copies. Now I know they tend to inflate the sales but they stated that in 2011 britney sold 110 M albums. Let' s say they inflated they will not inflate by 20 m albums overall, they might increase album sales by 5M max logically. It is a statement issues by jive at the time on twitter.
Hi Geo!
Jive never actually claimed Britney sold 110 million albums. I know why you're bringing up that number, as Britney herself said it during an interview, but let's be real, she's not the best with numbers.
Another thing to keep it mind is that more often than not, record labels try to pass record sales as pure album sales (ie: album sales, track sales, physical single sales, and now streams). There are few albums that will be updated soon thanks to new findings, but don't expect more than a few thousands!
Thank you stephen for your reply. I wish I can attach the tweet here but is it not britney who said but jive records at the time. I do have a screenshot of the tweet. And they specified that brintey sold 19 M at the time. I am just presenting something I found recently and I do have their screenshot. I was wondering why would they state that the album britney sold 19 M out of lie, that was my question. Thank you again for your time.
Thank you stephen for your reply. I wish I can attach the tweet here but is it not britney who said but jive records at the time. I do have a screenshot of the tweet. And they specified that brintey sold 19 M at the time. I am just presenting something I found recently and I do have their screenshot. I was wondering why would they state that the album britney sold 19 M out of lie, that was my question. Thank you again for your time.
That's the link to the tweet. Could you please look it up?
https://twitter.com/ScreamOffTheWal/status/1150669892472979456
Definitely not true. There is no way Baby could have reached 30 million. Anyway, Im glad that she seems to be having a big increase in Youtube views lately. ☺️
Hi but!
I'll re-check detailed Oricon / imports data as well as certs list we have for her, but I wouldn't give too much credit to these claims, for different reasons. I can buy the first one, but as it's often the case, it's a matter of what is really claimed. By now I have the confirmation that a lot of Japanese pressings were sold in various Asian countries for many artists / records, even when we don't notice it that much (see the last BTS JP single shipping 1 million but single only half stateside), so 1 million sales for Sony Music Japan do not necessarily mean sales in Japan. The second link is from Businesswire, which is a site which often repeats claims with no proper verification.
Hi Geo!
A lot of stuff is tagged as "official data" coming from labels, but a lot of it is just made up by fans, even more when it touches Britney since there is a very long history of fake receipts that flooded the web. Even I as a French I can see that this unsourced text shared on an unofficial twitter account is very poorly written, quite repetitive, and has various elements that would have never come from Jive. In fact, how can it even be an official statement from Jive when the text says the label closed and that she is now at RCA?
Of course, valid official figures like the ones of the IFPI, confirm that these figures aren't even close to be realistic, but it's almost off topic here since the claim is just made up to start with!
Hello MJD,
Can you please tell me what is your breakdown for ITZ's sales in the US?
Last year's Soundscan leak shows ITZ was at 3,036,780 as of 05/25/2018.
https://twitter.com/chartdata/status/1000121052989550592
In the Zone
ALBUM SALES: 3,036,780
ALBUMS W/TEA 3,428,979
ALBUMS W/TEA W/SEA ON-DEMAND AUDIO 3,524,071
ALBUMS W/TEA W/SEA ON-DEMAND 3,613,999 2xP
STREAMING ON-DEMAND 277,530,901
100 copies last week
The album was selling 100 copies a week so 14 months later, it should be at 3,040,000+ on Soundscan by now.
Is it possible that a comprehensive total of 3,300,000 might be slightly under-estimated?
Thank you.
Hello MJD,
I have a quick question. Why I am not able to see Britney’s total career sales. All of the tables her are not showing or loading. Is it a lag from the site. Thank you in advance for your support.
It happens to me too 2 weeks ago. I cant see results for any artists or tables. After a few days i finally can.
Hi Geo!
We updated the way we treat images so that they can be compressed, and page load time is strongly reduced. In the process we glitched pics of a few articles that we then re-loaded. I still haven't done it for Britney because we got new information so we are going to adjust a few numbers at the same time.
Hey MJD,
Thank you for your reply, do you have an idea when you will be updating Britney’s page. Thank you in advance.
Wow. I guess the new information received has been updated here. She had some nice increase in Latin American countries and Oops are now in the million copies category. It just proves how massive she was in Latin America at her peak. Also, cant believe Baby One More Time manage to beat Millenium pure album sales. Nice.
Hi, MJD
Since she moved 1.68 million albums in Southeast Asia by April 2000, why do you estimate 1.415 million Southeast Asian sales for BOMT? OIDA was not even relased then. It released a month later, it was impossible that intital shipments boomed even a month later, and Asia was always releasing international releases much later than in US and Europe. She was massively popular in China back then, I don't think the missing 265k sales come from OIDA intital shipments, but from China
Good job on the update guys, but I wanted to point out that Records & Achievements section is very messy and has old numbers mixed with new ones.
At 31,192,000 EAS, …Baby One More Time is the second most successful album from 1999.
*should be 31,642,000*
At 17,940,000 EAS, …Baby One More Time is the most successful song from 1998.
*should be 18,640,000*
At 12,900,000 EAS, Oops!… I Did It Again is among the Top 3 most successful songs from 2000.
*sould be 14,310,000*
At 7,880,000 EAS, Toxic is among the Top 5 most successful songs from 2003.
*should be 8,560,000*
Speaking of achievements, I think it would be cool if you added some other ones like her being one of few female artists who have managed a #1 album and a #1 single in three different decades.
I'm also curious about the 1999 album that topped BOMT in CSPC? Which one is it, may I ask?
And why did all albums increase in pure sales except The Singles Collection which went down? Wasn't it at 1,060,000 before the update? The sales in Japan for example increased by 5k so shouldn't the total sales have gone up?
Thank you. Keep it up.
