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Hi Rell!
The next artist studied makes music of a genre that has not been treated by a CSPC analysis yet!
Maybe someone can guess who it is 😉
Hi Martin!
Interesting point of view. Good point as well. You probably can't just look at an album's total to identify it's popularity. Take Survivor's Eye of a Tiger for example. Besides the title track, can anyone here name another song? Still, at 255 million streams on spotify it's doing pretty good, however 247 million of those are from the title track alone, the other 8 songs have a total of 7,870,000 streams, less than 1 million average! Same with Queen's Hot Space, I remember your comment about that one compared to Zeppelin. I wouldn't call Hot Space a popular album, it was a flop saved by a comfirmed hit. Under Pressure was already on GH prior to Hot Space! (So it might even be considered an orphan)
But I don't think we can simply look at the bottom track either. That way each and all of Metallica's first 5 albums would be more popular than Pink Floyd's The Wall for example. Even PF's own Animals would equal The Wall. WYWH would be twice, and DSOTM four times as popular as The Wall. Obviously Animals has just 5 songs compared to The Wall's 26. Making it easier for The Wall to get a higher total, but easier for Animals to get a higher bottom track.
Furthermore some albums include an obscurity that isn't fair to be measured upon (Nevermind's Endless Nameless come to mind)
So if neither the total nor the bottom track are fair measuring marks, then what? Disregard the top and bottom track, find the average of the rest and multiply by 1.x (x=number of tracks)???
How many popular tracks does a popular album need to have then? More than one. Two? Three? Half the album? All of the album? Or maybe all but one?
Personally, thinking back to my youth, shopping with my hard earned money in the local record store. If I only liked one song on an album, really liked one, then I wouldn't buy the album. I might as well go for the single. I suppose buying two singles could be an option too, but if I liked 3 songs I'd go for the album, better value for money, and chances are the rest would grow on me . Alternatively I'd seek out the one or two songs I liked on a compilation or a live album of course, LOL!
Great work on this article everyone! I have one question to ask about their success. Why did they have rather low physical singles sales? Is it because:
A. Their genre, as rock rarely gets huge success in this format, as it can be seen from acts like Green Day
B. The cannibalization factor, that the song was so powerful that it convinced consumers to go purchase the album instead of the single, like with Hotel California by the Eagles?
Or perhaps another factor, like lack of airplay or limited release?
I'd say hard rock acts are not typically driven by singles or their success, Led Zeppelin being a prime example, who traditionally shunned singles, concentrating predominately on albums & touring. AC/DC certainly released far more singles than Zeppelin but in their case (as with many hard rock acts) I'd say the single was just to get some airplay and give notice that a new album was out, not necessarily with the intention of heavily promoting it or it being a hit. I'd also suggest that the singles chart is always more orientated to the pop listener/fan and few hard rock singles tended to truly appeal to the single buyer & crossover.
I'd say the only exception to the rule was the mid to late 80's and even then mainly just in the US, when hard rock, hair metal etc acts were all the rage and such acts like Van Halen, Whitesnake, Heart, Bon Jovi, GnR, Def Leppard etc all managed to achieve some great singles success, with Top 10's and No.1's and truly crossover to the mainstream, through greater airplay and greater exposure for their videos on TV. AC/DC in a way, although there at the same time, were not really part of the big hair, pretty boy looks brigade and didn't really play that game and as such didn't have the same appeal to pop ears & eyes. It also coincided with a relatively lean period for them, when even their albums were not doing very well either.
Another reason (especially in the US) was FM radio, which would often play numerous album cuts or whole sides of an album or the whole album, this in turn would turn listeners onto the album rather than just a single or single song. Year in year out these FM stations would continue playing numerous tracks from classic rock albums, which resulted in keeping albums by the likes of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin & Pink Floyd in the publics ears & allowing them to continue selling fantastic quantities on catalogue long after their releases.
Hi Thomas / Martin!
Focusing on lowest tracks is precisely what I did when I started to check massively streaming figures back in 2014. My very first formula to convert streams into album sales used that method, assigning streams of the lowest song from all songs to the album and all streams over that threshold to individual songs.
The most I got into figures though, the most I realized it wasn't a good interpretation. As someone who almost never played individual songs in my life (almost exclusively full albums, never skipping a track, ever since I was young), the conclusion of my experience was tragic: the album format is a fraud, an album isn't an entity which exists in itself like a recording, it is barely a compilation of recordings, e.g. a collection of singles.
If you check the highest selling catalog albums, they are the ones with the highest cumulative strength of songs. Add streams of songs from Marley's Legend or CCR's Chronicles and the results will make it clear as to why these albums have been selling that much.
For long I refused this interpretation, after all, we can't compare Pink Floyd with the Spice Girls. Streams of Spice album tracks are ridiculous. Then that's why I realized that Spice, just like Happy Nation, just like Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em, etc, sold gigantic quantities of albums on the back of a popular single. Then you think: ok, a single may sell an album, but Floyd still sell albums thanks to their albums in a whole. So you check the facts. You noticed that they got a Top 10 hit in the UK in July 1967 and one month later they got their first top 10 album. During 6 years, their albums lasted less weeks Top 10 than the one containing the initial hit, showing that first song created the fanbase and following albums were barely exploiting that fanbase. During that period on which they registered 7 Top 10 albums in the UK, Floyd never made the Top 40 in the US. Album tracks were the same, so was the band and the press. The difference? They hadn't got a Top 40 hit first in the US. Then Money was a hit and Dark Side suddenly shot to #1. The next two albums, although huge sellers thanks to catalog sales, lasted barely 18 weeks combined inside the Top 20. Then Another Brick smashed and The Wall destroyed charts lasting 15 weeks at #1.
The conclusion is that no matter if you are called Pink Floyd or Spice Girls, it's indiviudal hits which sell records, singles... as well as albums.
To confirm this, here is a comparison of Led Zeppelin's album sales, the ultimate "album act", to streams of their respective best / worst 1/3 songs. All figures are in base 100 to enable the comparison of the evolution of figures from different natures (sales and streams).
What can we see? Their early albums have sales matching their leading hits. The lowest album cut doesn't make sense since both I and II have a bigger one than IV, showing it isn't relevant to understand what's the real generator of sales. After the peak of IV, which was a high on album sales, top hit and top 3 hits, we notice that curves of the #1 hit and the leading 3 singles goes down a lot, more than album sales. The reason is simple, they had an established fanbase. This is why sales run higher than the real popularity of their current songs, although we still clearly see that ups and downs match perfectly the leading songs. The only exception is Physical Graffiti, which sold less than suggested by its popularity, but again we can explain it easily since it was much more expensive due to its length. On their side, the weakest 1/3 tracks follow meaningless patterns as shown with Houses of the Holy low 3 songs hitting almost the same numbers as I and II.
If I remove 7,3 million sales to all albums (units of Presence) assuming they are due to the fanbase, there is as many as 6 albums with sales less than 10% away from their biggest hit. In the other side, there is 4 albums with low 3 tracks at least 35% off their sales. It may seem a bit technical, but basically album sales follow patterns of big hits with album cuts having very little impact.
Very interesting way to look at this. I once listened to a David Gilmour interview where he said The Final Cut had 3 great songs on it, the rest were average or sub standard. Overall, he thought the album was sub standard, because of this. I think most groups would view 3 great songs as at least a good album. Pink Floyd was clearly concerned about the continuity of the album as a whole, where Back in Black was a vehicle for 4 great songs, with some other songs to fill it out. I always thought BIB and DSOTM were comparable albums, but clearly, the bands approached them differently, or at least they have been received differently.
With Floyd in the UK, I think the change from Barrett to Gilmour caused the downturn in popularity, as they had to readjust themselves as a band, as well as their sound & style, with the loss of admittedly the key and most integral member. In many ways the Floyd with Waters & Gilmour at the helm is a different band to the one with Barrett, a bit akin to PG’s Fleetwood Mac and it’s transition from a blues band to a pop rock band with Nicks/Buckingham, they had to almost re-establish themselves musically and as a band.
Although Atom Heart Mother (1970) is clearly not one of PF’s more successful outings it did hit No.1 while Piper only reached No.6 and lasted 4 weeks longer on chart in its original run (18wks/14wks) and only 2wks less in the Top 10 and all of this on the back of no single. Meddle didn’t fare so well in hitting the No.1 spot or top 10 weeks but still hit No.3 and lasted 26wks on chart in its original run, their longest so far and again without the aid of a single.
In the US your “Money” reason is not true. DSOM first hit the chart on 17th March 1973 at No.95, jumping 42-27-9-3, hitting No.1 on the 28th April 1973 (the day I was born!). The Money single had not even been released by this point, it would not be released until 7th May 1973 and didn’t actually hit the chart until the 19th May 1973, some 8 weeks after DSOM hit the Top 40 and 3 weeks after it had hit No.1. Sure the Money single helped DSOM go back up the charts but it wasn’t the reason they had their first Top 40 album in the US or indeed No.1. The real reason DSOM was their first Top 40 and No.1 was their touring. They had been playing the DSOM album live from January 1972 and by the time of its US release had played it live at around 50 US/Canadian shows and were still in the US touring it on it’s week of release, before returning for more shows in June.
Similarly in the UK, Led Zeppelins first two albums were hits in 69/70/71, again with no singles at all, even more striking is that LZII spent 54wks inside the Top 10, without the aid of one. Again, as with Floyd, I’d say this was achieved by their live performances. I think in the very late 60’s and 70’s an albums success was as much to do with an artist touring as it was singles, if not more so for acts like Floyd and Zep. I’d say Zeps Houses of the Holy & Physical Graffiti albums initial US success, was more to do with their obvious status in 73/75 & their tours than their singles, such as D’yer Maker (No.20), Over The Hills & Far Away (No.51) or Trampled Underfoot (No.38).
I still think a lot of DSOMs were bought because they are DSOM, not necessarily because they had Money or Time on them, the same with LZIV, many would have bought it because it contained STH, BD & R&R, but I’d imagine a lot of people bought it because it is LZIV.
Why are not included the sales in Australia of High Voltage and T.N.T., even in the first album of the same name Backstreet Boys I noticed are not included sales in the US on the total
Hi Jsak!
They are both included under the "other full length LPs" category, page 37! 🙂
Also half the countries you got unavailable so how do you know then back in black hasn’t sold 48 million, I’m sorry this site is so inaccurate, I believe the bands own websites and sources close to the artists not you
