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If it is 5 M and that’s without streams, or track album equivalents we have to add that. Plus, you have to consider, that regardless of America, if we look at WW sales, that would add millions, (not counting towards Diamond, but still much higher than current numbers).
I am sure it would have gone up beyond 4 M by now.
Also, how do you know Britney hasn’t sold that much more? Did Soundscan update in 2011, 2015? If not, maybe they should update for the 20th anniversary, so we would definitely know.
The Britney album is one of her least stream album and Britney herself isnt really a monster streaming seller. So whatever streams she gets, it will hardly do a thing. Plus, regardless of that, Chartmasters already put weightings from Physical Single Sales, Downloads, Streamings, Compilations, etc on that album. So there is no need to bring up streaming. Soundscan last detect it at 4,899,000 album sold I think that was back in 2004/2005 because I remember seeing that figure back then. But I highly doubt she would have add another 1-2-3 million pure album sales. The album never reenters the Top 200 charts since 2004. So whatever little sales she got, its not gonna reach millions, hundred thousands at most (Especially since album sales kept on dropping year after year at double digit rate since then). 5.2 million estimated by Chartmasters looks reasonable.
Let’s say it generated from 2005 to 2021 just 50,000 total CPCS sales in USA streams, track album equivalents and pure sales per year, that could still be 800,000 over 16 years, and could push it up to the 6 M threshold since you mentioned 5.2 M looks reasonable.
Hi Trumry!
There are two big flaws on your message. The first is that you add sales since 2005. The thing is, Billboard last reported its Nielsen sales as recently as in 2019, and as they do for several years they report 'Britney' at a rounded 4.4 million. Add in 588,000 BMG Music Club copies, and you get the near 5 million copies that has been floating around lately.
Then, you seem to consider that 50,000 copies a year is a low expectation, but the real number this album has been moving is way lower than that.
It sold 2.92 million units in 2001 and 1.126 million in 2002. It was at 4.3 million by the end of 2004. In 2011, the album had sold 4.342 million. The truth is that the 4.4 million figure is most likely rounded up.
Sales of singles downloads for this album add for about 150,000 units in total. Its 300 million streams in the World through Spotify hardly suggest millions of sales either.
Why not also add in YouTube streams?
Also, was I wrong? You added the 588,000 + 4.4 M, which pushes it to 5M (adding in the singles downloads means you don’t even have to round up). Did you only add singles, and not all album track streams?
Also, aren’t 300 M / 1500 = 200,000 more albums based on streams from Spotify? Afterall, looking at your own Streaming live update chart, she gained 206K streams since the article was last updated…
200K + 150K + 588K +4.4 M = 5.33 M,
Throw in YouTube and all songs from the album on Spotify, and you have a chance to push it up to a few more 100 K.
RIAA says it sold 4 M in 2001 since it was last certified just 6 weeks after release (4x Platinum by mid December). It would have definitely sold more than 2.92 M by end of 2001, since it had 2 more weeks till end of year and already hit 4 M…
Either way, according to your numbers:
I meant to say that Britney’s track album equivalents includes all songs not just singles, (rather than accidentally say not only single streams). In either case, it wouldn’t let me edit it.
So I think if 4.32 M in 2019 (it didn’t seem to include streams, otherwise it would have moved up more than just .012 M since 2011) + Streams, all song track album equivalents, and we basically have to view 4.324 M as pure sales, then BMG’.s 588 K = 5.104 M + 150K (singles sales) = 5.254 M + 441 K (streams from your live updated chart) = 5.691 M sales + all remaining non-single track album equivalents and additional pure sales since 2019.
Suddenly 6 M doesn’t seem so farfetched and since streaming didn’t really even count on sales until 2014, but here you include all years of streaming, your #s would be more accurate and show higher sales than Soundscan.
Similar to how Soundscan didn’t count track album equivalents until 2005, but you didn’t skip on adding single sales accumulated before then… so Soundscan underestimated and only begins to counts after a certain date.
Soundscan is accurate for pure sales though, it’s just not accurate on streams and TAE.
Trumru,
You need to be more careful / precise when you deal with the numbers.
- 4.342 + 588 = 4.93 million rather than 5.104 million
- 300m streams does equal to 200k album sales, but these are global figures not US
- you want to add "songs from the album on Spotify" on top of that, while these are already added among these 200k
- Soundscan is 100% accurate on streams and TEA
- all numbers I mentioned include singles + album cuts, not only singles
- RIAA doesn't say the album sold 4 million in 2001. It says it shipped 4 million in 2001, which is very different. Shipments should not be mixed with pure sales. The album sold 2.92 million in the entire year.
So rather than your calculation, the reality will be 5.1m (pure) + 150k (songs' DLs) + a part of 200k (audio streams) + remaining platforms + a few extra pure sales for post-2003 club sales = nowhere near to 6 million still.
You specifically said: “Sales of singles downloads for this album add for about 150,000 units in total.”
So you need to be more careful / precise bc your own statement tells me you only factored in singles sales, rather than all album tracks.
Overall based on your comment:
5.1 M + 150 K DL songs equivalents + *220 K albums streams = 5.47 M + your point on pure club sales in 2003 (and beyond TBH) push it up further.
To me 5.47 M isn’t that far off of 6 M, and we also have to count vinyl releases, the fact people purchase her songs and albums digitally at any moment, and the fact it hasn’t been updated by Soundscan in years. This is key bc Britney has Re surged in popularity due to her court case and the 20th anniversary of her album coming up. Her team has promoted vinyl editions of her albums to make up for her hiatus.
(I divided her total *441 K streams across all platforms by half to count for USA only, based on your live update chart at the bottom which shows its total album streams)
There are little point in separating 'singles' and 'tracks' in digital statistics, that is something from the physicals era.
Why would you take 50% from the US? Streaming statistics are way more balanced than physical sales used to be. Over the last 3 months, she has got 278 million views on YouTube, only 47 million of them are from the US, less than 20%. For Spotify it's about 30%. Then, our formula divides YouTube views by 11,750 while the RIAA uses 1,500 instead. But even taking that into account, 'Britney' numbers leaked some weeks ago and it was at 146k SEA.
You keep talking about it as some kind of modern Dark Side of the Moon, but it's not. Outside of hard core fans, this album has been irrelevant ever since the release of My Prerogative, hence why it's pure sales are virtually frozen for 17 years. Its LP releases are limited to 5k, and it's organic sales every year are down to 1,000 copies per year. In The Zone, with the same 3 2019-2020 LPs batches limited to 5k each, has sold 17,000 copies in the US over the last 4 years, total. No need to say that songs' download are absolutely dead.
How can you say that "5.47 M isn’t that far off of 6 M" when the album is doing so poorly? It has 300k from TEA+SEA, and sold less than 100k pure since 2004. That means it hasn't moved 400k over the last 17 years. If half a million is missing, even if it holds the same popularity as these years, it means your "not that far off" translates into more than 2 decades worth of sales activity to get there. Obviously, in all likelyhood way less people will streams it in 2040 than now. Depending on how it decreases over time, it's a not that far off that could last forever.
I only pointed it out bc you said singles, then clarified you meant all songs from the album. The fact you can pick any song on iTunes and buy it now means since 2003 (18 years ago), it didn’t matter if a song was a single, a song could be purchased individually and that would still count for the album, if 9 more people bought even a different song from the album. This makes a huge difference, bc it doesn’t matter that the album was released in the physics era, in 2001, as long as a song can be purchased digitally now, it can definitely count towards catalogue sales.
Also, unfortunately, original streaming services like AOL 1st Listen are not counted. Britney set a record for having the highest 1st Day streams of 1 M for her Boys-remix, and I could only image how much it accumulated the rest of the week, etc. and all of those streams for all of her songs overall.
In either case, I just wanted to see it also adds up. So basically you put it at 5.1 M + 150 K streams + 150 TAE = 5.4 M sales.
That means it should still be Re-certified to add the additional sales to make it quintuple platinum, while the original argument didn’t even consider BMG music sales since RIAA doesn’t seem to include that.
In either case, it deserves its 5 M certification, and I have a feeling it is still going to go Diamond.
***
Although from a different album:
I just read that Toxic across all streaming platforms, has 600 M streams in the USA, this would translate into 4 M single sales.
My point, originally, is that due to Not certifying, it appears much less than it actually is, and on RIAA it shows Toxic as Gold, while it should be at least 4 M more from streams, not including direct song downloads.
The source claims 6.45 M total sales including 2.5 M single sales, and the 4 M from the streams boost. That to me seems like a low ballpark for such a famous song, but at least it shows that just bc we assume an old song isn’t as popular, doesn’t mean we should rely on old certs.
Regardless if it was certified diamond in the US or not; it still sold 10 million+ worldwide, it still was the biggest debut by a female artist that year, and 2nd biggest over all. It’s still considered one of the most successful albums of the 21st century, and any artist today would kill to have a 10 million+ selling album. I feel the shade in your replies, and it’s completely inappropriate.
from 2019 to 2021 I saw consistent growth on Spotify and youtube, even though it hasn't released anything since 2016, it already has 22.6 million monthly listeners, Britney it's definitely superior to its competitors at the time, except for Beyonce, which had a peak of 10 years after her debut.
Do you believe Britney can do well on the next album?
BTW Billboard updated Britney's total sales and streams in the US for the 20th anniversary of the 'Britney' album and she has sold 200k pure albums in the country since May 2020 (we also got an update then). Probably around 400k since this article was last updated in April 2019 (she was at 33.6M in Jaruary 2019).
https://mobile.twitter.com/gthot20/status/1457008685671145484
So here is the final posting by JIVE before it folded, and made a piece on Britney’s albums up to that point (Femme Fatale). She sold, according to them, 19 M WW sales of Britney, and 10 M WW sales of In The Zone. This is from 2011, so a decade ago. It mentions Baby One More Time sold 30 M, and Oops sold 24 M. Unfortunately it doesn’t mention sales of Blackout or Circus.
Originally it was written in this site’s post as: Britney album as 10 M, and ITZ as 7 M, Baby One More Time at 24 M sales, and Oops as 19 M. So they should be fixed.
I literally have the proof in the picture. So it almost looks as if the numbers written in this article, were written for the wrong album, since the picture would put Oops at 24 M sales, while it listed Baby One More Time at 24. Then 19 M for Oops is actually the number for Britney. Same for Britney being listed as 10 M when that’s the number for In The Zone. Your numbers are right, but just associated to the wrong album.
Also it lists her debut single Baby One More Time as selling 10 M copies worldwide as one of the greatest selling of all time. Please update that too. Obviously, streams and a decade later of sales would move it even higher since this article of JIVE is from 2011.
