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SkkyWill, I was wrong but I'm very happy to see Barbra being currently the 4th biggest selling female music artist on this site.
I want Nana Mouskouri next. Her analysis might reach more than 200 pages though.
As usual, a little-conservative and rigorous figures album sales, millions less than the figure in Fan of Music (146m in 2009). And with new adjustments identified for physical singles sales as MJD , 35 million world is 11 million less than my own estim, I ask and I found in the article MJD refered to above, the singles sales down over 20% after the adjustment.As for the digital sales, MJD had writte than since there is very little info there, he was most likely go by extrapolations from her streams. I dont agree but respect the "disappoint" figure. Divas' catolge power were always less impressive than band and male solo, and her produce only seven stand alonn hit during since 81, her golden years of hit had been 20 years before digital era began. If we compare her peers's record sales, her sold almost the same album figures as the 2nd and 3rd, 4th divas combined! and sold more solo physical singles than any peers other than Diana Ross. Digital sales and streaming performs not behind shade apart from Tina and plus band's Cher, the only two peers whose big era was begin during 80s, and Barbra never sing her biggest singles live untill 2016 tour, and did only littele output MTV era.
As MJD quoted in page 1 and page 48:
"Her trajectory followed the one of the music industry. Her early albums were issued only in English-speaking countries. Each of the soundtracks Funny Girl (1968), The Way We Were (1974) and A Star Is Born (1976) opened new markets to her. In 1980, the Barry Gibb-powered Guilty transformed Streisand into a global superstar."
"One may say her sales aren’t that much global. It is true that the US is far and away her biggest market, accounting for 61,4 million of these sales, some 67% of the total. It is the way the industry was though, the same was true for most artists. Her debut album wasn’t even released in Asia, in Latin America or in continental Europe so obviously the US were going to represent the largest share of its sales! Once overseas markets started to be developed in mid-70s, Streisand did very well there. Guilty is the prime example since it sold only 43% of its units in the US."
Her top 20 youtube streaming songs only three of them with MV:
Tell Him
Somewhere
Memory
other ones all live or studio scenes-made, It's such a pity her most pop years had gone before MTV began to popular, and only 6 studio album during 81-99
Her digital sales and streaming may be a little underestimated?! MJD, could I ask a question how did your team work the dates especially the former format? It's really lower than my have expectd, thank you！
Using the article’s last date, Barbra top Yearly Most Successful Female Album at least FIVE (ELEVEN) TIMES!
*1963– BARBRA STREISAND –Two Million LPs
1964 – BARBRA STREISAND – FUNNY GIRL
*1965 / 1966– BARBRA STREISAND – Four more Top 5 albums
*1967 – BARBRA STREISAND –A CHRISTAMS ALBUM
**1970 – BARBRA STREISAND – GREATEST HITS
1974 – BARBRA STREISAND – THE WAY WE WERE
1976 – BARBRA STREISAND – A STAR IS BORN
1978 – BARBRA STREISAND – SONGBIRD
**1979 – BARBRA STREISAND – GREATEST HITS VOL2
1980 – BARBRA STREISAND – GUILTY
**1978 – BARBRA STREISAND – MEMORIES
*Pure sales winner
**Compilation Albums
Hi SkkyWill!
I went through all releases of all her singles and albums. The main reason behind the lower figures than on former estimates is that plenty of her records weren't released in most areas of the World. For example, I can't find a single release of an album of her in Asia outside Japan before 1971. Even in Japan, from her 11 pre-Funny Girl albums, only the pair My Name Is... was issued there. In the same way, out of her first 10 releases Color Me Barbra was the only one released in Latin markets like Mexico and Spain. Her 1969-1971 albums weren't even released in Australia. Deeper into her career this was still true as Lazy Afternoon was released only in the UK / Netherlands / Spain in Europe. In recent times it still happens, Higher Ground is their last proper release in Japan (among studio albums), that's why she almost never charted with her later releases as they were only available as imports.
As for singles sales, we need to keep in mind that her Hot 100 statistics are favorable to her since she was an Airplay favorite in the US. Also, many of her singles only had 7" or 12" releases to boost album sales!
Hi koerenas_albelia!
In the end, I got a way to identify her download sales quite well. Apart from the already existing formulas I have to convert streaming data into rough downloads thanks to the experience I gained on previous artists, Barbra is classified as a Vocal act on iTunes. Here is the vocal chart in the UK right now.
When you analyse gaps between each song, you quickly understand that the #1 sold 19 copies in the last 24 hours with slightly more than 0,05% representing 1 sale. In that time frame in the UK:
- Woman In Love sold 6 copies
- Guilty sold 5 copies
- The Way We Were, Evergreen, Don't Rain On My Parade, Tell Him, Send In the Clowns sold 1 copy each*
*please note that there is tons of songs tied at 1 unit so at the bottom of the Top 100 songs are no doubt charted thanks to sales from previous days, they are pushed down when "new" songs are downloaded.
Currently, 1 million singles are downloaded per week in the UK while 1,6 billion got downloaded since the creation of iTunes. If Woman In Love sells 42 copies per week now, it suggests 67k sold since 2004. Yesterday, it had sold "only" 4 copy, so the trend appears to be quite favorable today. The song never charted / isn't Silver by the BPI, so 50k-ish seems a good estimate for the UK. Guilty is likely on 20k-ish (it had only 1 sale yesterday) as the ratio with WIL is always around 1/3. Then her remaining 'big' songs can be located in the 5-15k region to date.
The same process was applied for all major markets. In the US, she has 7 songs (she had 8 yesterday) selling from 2% to 6% of Sinatra's My Way. All songs are separated by 0,006469726%, which means My Way sells 155 copies per day currently. This suggests 70 sales or less per week for Barbra's top hits (155 * 0,06% * 7 days) which equals to a mere 95k downloads since they were introduced as per market data. Obviously, she had some rebounds in the last 15 years there, The Way We Were sold 600 copies in the week before the Oscars and 2,000 the week after her rendition of the song in 2013. Still, with Sinatra outselling her inside the current Top 100 by 17 to 1 (697 sales to 41), one can't expect much from Streisand's catalog on this format. She must be selling from 60 to 75 downloads per day currently of her entire catalog, this is barely 25k per year!
I see, as for Asia sales, I remember she got several platinum cers from Hongkong, and her last album peak high position in Taiwan. Some of her albums also among starsing record best-selling english cassette in China, I know her early album not released in these countries, but what about re-issue and import?
Thank you. After you introduce the new way , I think it's very useful and inspired for chart/sales likes as me it's hardly to find her digital dates, you are such a professinal sales expert,.
Now that all the divas have their Barbara Streisand analysis we can
move over to bigger and better things :).
