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Hi MJD,
How do you explain the poor sales of the "Je m'appelle Barbra" album ? I remember reading articles about the exposure she had in french-speaking countries for that album sung in English and French. Do we have any information about its rankings in France, Belgium, Switzerland or Israel ? It was mostly made for those countries (its sales in America are quite huge, considering it wasn't made for the US). I own that record and there is a note from Maurice Chevalier complimenting Barbra's voice. BTW, she also released an LP calles "Barbra Streisand chante en français" only for european countries. She really tried hard lol.
Thank you very much ! 🙂
Hi Rell!
Album sales were still dreadful in France back then, we still preferred EPs instead! A hit album from a foreign artist would have been lucky to sell 25,000 units at that period. Anyway, that album wasn't a hit either, it never charted on unofficial rankings of that time. I saw various French lists for these years, but Barbra was still virtually unknown by 66. She got her first "succès d'estime" a pair of years later with Funny Girl!
Would it be fair to say that Barbra was the first female artist to cross the 100 million threshold? Or did Madonna or Whitney beat her to it?
Will you studied Barbra Streisand Popularity Analysis in France as other Album Sales article
Hi Crispy!
Considering her current CSPC / her Soundscan sales / her share of US sales, it seems safe to say she got there by the end of the 80s, so yes she was most likely the first one!
You missed some Brazil codes:
My name is Barbra, Two... (total 3k)
Guilty (CD+DVD): (total 3k)
The Movie Album (total 5,5k)
What Matters Most (total 4k)
Found here: https://www.ukmix.org/forums/search.php?keywords=barbra&t=33047&sf=msgonly
wasnt JUST FOR THE RECORD sold nearly 500k in US alone?Why here is showing 120k WW
MJD! Can we see the breakdown of sales for Tell Him by Barbra Streisand and Céline Dion? Thank u
Through the years I have listened to everything that is publicly available by Barbra Streisand. The best part is being able to hear her grow throughout the years from being just a girl then into a refined woman. On each and every album that she has recorded there is, at the very least, one astonishing performance.
Also, with such a huge catalog, she has never had anything pulled or gone "out of print"...everything is still available. To me that speaks volumes about her popularity and innate artistry.
Hi MJD. I was just wondering. Will the 80s, 90s Divas catalogue sales drop even further to Barbra's or many other 60s Divas rate of catalogue sales growth in the long future or will they be able to maintain selling around a million EAS per year. Thank you.
Hi Jazz!
They will definitely go down as time passes. Their fans get older and they will get less and less visible, until they pass away obviously but I'm letting this apart as Barbra herself is still with us.
One of the things thay may make them go down at a slower pace is that they are all from the MTV era. They did release music videos, on which they are young. For youngsters, it's difficult to think about Barbra as something else than an old singer, so it's hard to relate to her and hard to get interested into her music. It's different when you can see 80s clips of Madonna or 90s videos from Celine, Mariah and Whitney, then you can better value what they really represented, you can put their music into context and ultimately it's easier to appreciate it more.. although there will be no miracle still as these videos will still look more and more dated through the years. It will just soften the process.
To be more precise, they have different careers and time will thus impact them differently. Whitney has a soul vibe, her popular songs will always be featured on black / R&B playlists a la Etta James or Aretha Franklin, she may age just fine. Mariah's general public perception will focus more and more around her xmas material, she is likely to be seen as Bing Crosby or Nat King Cole in a distant future, her remaining catalog will do next to nothing while AIWFCIY will keep smashing. Madonna always evolved with trends, the problem with that is that once the trend is over, the material sounds dated very quickly, which is why her streams are already weak considering the amount of hits she released. The good point of that yet, is that trends follow circles, they come back, so just like ABBA or the Bee Gees we can expect her catalog to enjoy revivals every 5 to 15 years. Time may be harsher with Celine, adult contemporary singers target an older audience who will pass away sooner than main pop stars, and there are always an influx of new AC singers coming year after year. She will likely be on Barbra's shoes at some point in the future.
Why do you think female artists are way easily forgotten than male ones? like why are artists like the Rolling Stones (which young people can't really relate to at all) have more current popularity than Madonna and Mariah
and do you think more recent artists like Rihanna, Taylor, Adele and Beyoncé will have the same fate ??
Ooh such an interesting analysis. I always find it weird why many big Adult Contemporary singers streams are somewhat weak compared to pop/urban singers, and your explanation make sense. Just like how Barbra Streisand catalogue isnt selling as well as lets say Tina Turner who is more urban sounding. Also, from your comment are you suggesting that in the next few years Madonna will have a rebound of strong streams, and Whitney will continue to produce strong streaming sales? I am not sure about this but I think Whitney catalogue right now is selling on par with Mariah or Madonna.
This needs to be update as Barbra has released walls and release me 2, which were moderately sucessful. Plus songs like "woman in love" have surpassed 100 million streams this year.
Something that never gets mentioned is Streisand never did concert tours in the 70's or 80's to promote album sales. Had she done so, she would have (easily) more than doubled even tripled her album sales! All the others did concert tours! -FFT
She had a movie career back then, when being an actor was more profitable than being a singer. So she benefited other way around with a movie career.
Walls sold over 60 thousand in Australia, it's safe to assume the album has sold at least over 200 thousand copies worldwide. The same can be said for Release Me 2, which charted moderately high is several countries. Also why aren't her DVD sales included? Most of them were number #1! Katy Perry's DVD sales were included in her analysis. Also Woman In Love has over 111 million streams in Spotify and with the spread videos on YouTube at least another 150 million, are these streams already included in the analysis?
Hi MJD, why didn't you count Funny Girl (1964) and Nuts as Barbra albums but you did countThe Main Event?
HI MDJ, can you tell us how many physical singles did she sell in USA?
She only has 7.5 millilon units certified on RIAA.
I know this will likely not be updated again. But according to a soundscan update from 2007 (provided by a user from UKmix) Higher Ground has sold additional 3 million copies in the US which are uncertified, and "Back to Broadway" another 1.7 million, also uncertified. " A Love Like Ours", another 1.1 million, other albuns also got plenty of uncertified sales in the US (I could have interpreted it all wrong though, feel free to correct me). "Guilty" also has certs in more countries than mentioned here (like in Brazil, before Pro Musica existed and reformulated the whole certs system, Barbra and Diana were the only woman with gold records in here. Barbra has two for "A Star is Born" and "Guilty" which are 20 thousand copies each, and she has another 10 thousand from the database codes available since 2003 which is 30.000 copies for guilty here then). Also in the booklet of "Just for the record" it's written some countries where is has been certified: Australia/New Zealand, Canada, UK, Brazil, Japan, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, Austria, Israel, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, USSR). Also with the sales from "Walls", "Release Me 2" and "Live At The Bon Soir" and the uncertified ones I mentioned, I believe Barbra could have surpassed Whitney, but I'm not sure.
Some additional trivia from Brazil: Although Barbra became a big international star in the 70s, 80s, she already was famous in Brazil since the 60s.
Singles chart history in Brazil:
1964-1965: People #55 in the pop Brazil chart and #74 in the overall Brazil charts+
1968: Free Again #40 in the overall Brazil chart
1971: Where You Lead #100 in the Rock Brazil chart
1974: All In Love Is Fair #39 in the overall Brazil chart
1974: The Way We Were #54 in the overall Brazil chart and #8 in the pop Brazil chart.
1977: Evergreen #28 overall Brazil chart and #11 pop Brazil chart (movie was a hit here too).
1978: You Don't Bring Me Flowers #8 in pop Brazil chart.
1979: No More Tears #30 overall Brazil chart,
#64 pop Brazil chart, #9 R&B chart
1979: The Main Event #82 pop Brazil chart
1980: Woman In Love #2 in pop Brazil chart
1980: Guilty #22 overall Brazil chart, #46 pop Brazil chart
(Guilty plays on Radio to this day)
1981: Comin' In And Out Of Your Life #95 overall Brazil chart and #91 pop Brazil chart
1985: Make No Mistake He's Mine #52 overall Brazil chart
(The last two songs were also themes for soap operas and made more famous for that during that time)
1997: I Finally Found Someone #29 pop Brazil chart.
"Wet" was a successful album here too, Roberto Carlos has even covered "Niagara" and is a fan of hers.
So overall she's had a huge longevity here.
Also channels like SBT would change their entire programming to exhibit her 90s concerts.
In the last two decades she sold decently here too:
The Movie Album: 5500
Guilty Pleasures: 25000
Live in Concert 2006 : 3000
Love Is The Answer: 10000
The Ultimate Collection: 7000
Partners: 7000
Encore: 2000
Walls was number 1 in ITunes Brazil.
She could have sold over 200-300k records in here from the 60s to today.
