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Hi Chartmasters! First of all, thank you for all your hardwork in doing this. So I was just wondering. I noticed that why is Womanizer only 3.2 million in your singles CSPC list when its digital sales in the US alone are at 3.5 million. I haven't looked at her other singles in the list yet cause I'm not familiar with all of her digital sales but I know for a fact that Womanizer stands at 3.5M in the US alone. Am I missing something?
Hey Stephen I was wondering if Britney is gonna be updated soon by any chance? This may seem highly unlikely but I used the discogs method from one of your articles to check her Album sales and I’m not sure if this is correct in the zone is listed in the US at 3,335,000 Million but when I used discogs the US Owners are at 1,483 and I compared The Evanescene Album “Fallen” from 2003 because you recently studied that one and it’s from the same year anyway that had 4,051 owners in the US against 1,483 owners for In the zone factoring in the discogs methods I got 4,350,000 Sales for in the zone in the US because 1,483 and 4,051 creates a 36.6% gap in sales while adding the fact that Britney’s album is collected 0.47 times more on discogs I got my result, Am I missing something? Or is Britney Album sales severely underestimated? It’s weird because I’ve seen so many correct sales reports from you guys but discogs says another story for me, could someone please help on this one on what in the zones current US sales are please? The discogs method is pretty confusing sometimes I’m sorry
I wonder how many albums she sold in 1999 and 2000 WW. She was certified 13x plat for BOMT December 2000 The same month oops it was certified 8x plat. BOMT came out January 1999 so that means Britney sold over 21+ million albums in America in under two years. Besides Mariah Carey with Music box-Merry Xmas-Daydream and Celion Dion with Falling into you- Lets talk about love I don’t think any other female artists Have shifted so many album units and such a short amount of time Compared to Mariah , Celine , Britney.
Hi Chartmasters! I was wondering if you had any official sources regarding Blackout and Circus Italian sales because I wanted to update Britney’s Wikipedia page. I only found Musica&Dischi 2008 YEC where they stated that Circus had sold 40k copies https://archive.ph/20120906225443/http://www.musicaedischi.it/notizie_dettaglio.php?id=2599 so I guess that it sold about 15k more in 2009 considering that it was still charting. But I cannot find anything else. Thanks in advance! And great job by the way! Keep up the good work!
singles CSPC means singles and albums Equivalent units. 3.2 million single CSPC means the single sales were turned into album Equivalent units alone with the single strength from the orginal album sales also with some stream Equivalent units
Did you add her REMIX albums? Can we have a breakdown by market/country??
You said you do have a screenshot of the tweet,So you did the screenshot by yourself Whats the original account or archive?
And how can it even be an official statement from Jive when the text says the label closed and that she is now at RCA? Whats the original account?
On the 20th year anniversary of oops I did it again billboard released a statement that Britney sold 150 million albums to date. Could you please explain the discrepancy between your stats and billboard, which is a very credible source?
Hi BritneyFan!
I suppose that you have a link that shows that Britney has sold 150 millions albums to date? We will be happy to see it to update the data we have if necessary 🙂
Here is the link : https://www.billboard.com/music/britney-spears. I guess billboard is never wrong. I would appreciate if you could update her album sales accordingly. Thank you so much!
Scroll right by clicking on the arrow when you open the page and you will see the statement from billboard stating that she sold 150 million albums to date.
This is the link : https://www.billboard.com/music/britney-spears. I hope you can update Britney’s sales accordingly. This is the official page of billboard stating that Britney sold 150 million albums worldwide. Thank you in advance for your hard work.
This is a classic mistake. Billboard and some awards for example claiming Michael Jackson sold 750 million albums or Thillers' 104 million copies sold. And this is obviously impossible. Britney is far far away from 150 million albums sold.
I don’t think billboard which is the go to source would do a “mistake” concerning sales when their whole objective is to report the sales in an accurate matter. This is the go to source in America. If they are mistaken then the whole system and charting positions are compromised.
Billboard whole objective is to state sales in the US, even then they dont do the job of tracking US sales. They used Nielsen data to determine weekly rankings. From RIAA and Nielsen data it is safe to say that Britney sold 30-40 million albums in the US alone, its impossible to believe her sales elsewhere reached a cumulative of 110-120 million albums. Billboard does not track sales or do rankings on album sales worldwide. So Billboard is not a reliable organization when it comes to global non us sales. If you add up all her updated certification tallies it doesnt add up. I have also checked ur link. Nowhere in ur link states that she sold 150 million albums. Ive also google some other pages, some source says she sold 100 million RECORDS and some says she sold 150 million RECORDS. But Ive never encountered any source which says she sold 150 million ALBUMS. If we are talking about 150 million RECORDS then Chartmasters figure are correct, in fact according to their figure shr sold 176 million records = 76 million albums + 18 million physical singles + 82 million downloads. Which is again, above the general believe that she sold only 150 million records.
Exactly Michael!
As I explained many times, Billboard are reporters, they are not a source. Their accuracy entirely relies on who they are citing. When they mention RIAA awards or Soundscan sales, they are as accurate as the RIAA or Soundscan (meaning 100% correct for what it stands for). When they report something a label told to them, they are as accurate as the label is (accurate more often than not). If they report something coming from a manager, chances are the claim will be false.
Then, just because something appears inside the Billboard doesn't mean it's a Billboard claim. In fact, a huge part of their articles are written by freelance writers and they are tagged as such, although nobody seems to bother looking at who's writing an article before using it as a valid source!
Pretty sure Whitney sold more during the Bodyguard era. Plus, the 21 million album sales u mentioned is just US sales. Not including global sales. In which she could have sold probably like 35 million in just 2 years.
RIAA is clearly not true reflection of her sales. It look like her team does not want to apply for certifications any more.
Like Toxic is still Gold, TTWE has no certification.
Also now all britney's album have over 200m plays on spotify. What about apple music, tidal, etc.? I know this data is hard to get, but clearly her sales are more than what is stated.
Also it appears her Album sales in BMG were not counted
I don’t understand why from BOMT to Blackout there are 2x more countries reported than your reports for other artists (?????)
Like, for Rihanna
You say that Good Girl Gone Bad (a monster seller) has sold only 150k copies in the rest of the world based on your estimations, you are saying that a flop album like Blackout sold more in those other countries (not reported on Rihanna’s article)? LOL
Do you know that for Asia, Europe and Latin America, the complete results of all countries are shown, just that the main ones are the only ones visible, right? These applies for all artists even though you cannot see all markets. I don’t know why this article is the exception but well.
Blackout Rest of The World sales listed here is only 29k. So what the hell are u talking about? GGGB also sold like 9 million albums compared to Blackout 2.2 million. Do u have dyslexia or something?
MJD listed all markets for all artists, he just displayed the main ones. Do the math, GGGB 3.9 million sales in Europe for example doesnt add up with the totals that was displayed. Which means it is listed for every single countries, even the ones that arent displayed. When it comes to Britney it is easier to list more markets, because her record labels kept her certifications updated back then. So there is direct more accurate results for her. For Rihanna when it comes to the smaller more obsecure market the sales was more bssed on estimations.
Her BMG sales were added to RIAA. BOMT and OIDIA were scanned at 12 million ++ and 9 million ++ by soundscan. RIAA still certidies BOMT 14x and OIDIA 10x because they already add BMG club sales. When it comes to single, yes I agree that many of her singles would have seen big certification increase once updated (People dont usually update singles sales anyway). But based on Album sales even if there is any increase once updated, I highly doubt shes going to see that big of an increase. Britney has always been a poor catalogue seller. Shes very good at selling massive amount of albums within the first 1-2 years and after that her albums stop selling. So whatever albums that hasnt been updated is hardly going to make any difference. Besudes, this website has already taken into factors all of that stuff, and make their own estimations.
