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Thanks for this hard work, just a few questions though. It's a Man's World can't be at 225k in the UK as it only sold 101k in 1996 and only reached no.28 in 1995 so that number really should be at 150k max. Also, the Cher 1987 album can't be at 200k in the UK as it sold less than 100k in 1988 and didn't chart again. Heart of Stone didn't reach double platinum in the UK so can't be at 750k, more like 550k. Great work but some of the album sales for the UK and some other European countries are too high.
Hi Stephen!
There is no way It's a Man's World is at 150k max with its chart run, you are massively downgrading the Xmas market. The year 1995 was bigger than 2007 in the UK (196m to 193m album sales). Check those figures from 2007:
1wk after Xmas - #65 album sells 7,771 (Cher was #70 on that week)
Xmas Week - #56 album sells 16,062 (Cher was #75 on that week)
2wks before - #51 album sells 14,499 (Cher was #60 on that week)
3wks before - #40 album sells 16,902 (Cher was #53 on that week)
4wks before - #56 album sells 6,147 (Cher was #39 on that week)
5wks before - #40 album sells 8,854 (Cher was #28 on that week)
Basically, she averaged about 12,000 units a week for 7 weeks, which means 84,000 units. Then, you need to consider Brittania Music Club which was strong at that point. You can add 10% on those 185,000 units. Then, it hasn't gone from 101k in 1996 to 0 in 1997. By experience, I can tell that the worst an album can do from year A to year A+1 is divide its sales by 10 and in fact 10k is a good estimate for It's a Man's World in 1997 considering it was still selling 1k/week by September 1996. Add in very low sales since, you get up to 225,000 units shipped to date.
Not sure why you think that the 1987 album sold less than 100,000 units in 1988. In fact, it went Gold in May, 10 of that year! It was Silver as early as in February, which show that it was selling Ok amounts in 1987 although it was outside the Top 100. That's your main error on all your comments - you seem to assume an album sells 0 as soon as it is out of charts, that's not how it works. 'Cher' started selling in 1987, broke 100k in May 1985 and ended the year on about 125,000 units. Then it continued selling from 5,000 to 10,000 copies a year until the release of Greatest Hits in 1992. This was her first album in CD format, it preceeded two strong efforts and wasn't cannibalized by compilations when they smashed, you can't assume it stopped selling during those years. It re-entered the Top 200 in 1995 for two weeks, no doubt if a top 200 was available in 1989-1993 we would have see more occurences of this kind.
Heart of Stone was #28 of the year in 1990, no figure available but at the same position the album from 1989 sold 380,000 units. The market dropped 7% in-between, so you can go with 355,000 units for the year. It was Silver in October 1989 and Gold in November, reaching Plat in February 1990 already. It was solid during Christmas time (similar to It's a Man's World) but had several more months to sell. The estimate is 140,000 units for 1989 (sadly the cut-off for the year end chart was as high as 190,000). In 1991 it spent 21 weeks Top 75 averaging about 3,000 units per week giving the market size, that's 66,000 units, plus 31 weeks just outside, about 1,500 per week, a total of 112,000 for the year - a total of already 635,000 units. It still went top 50 in mid-1992! Again, if the chart was a Top 200, we would have see it charted more often than not until 1993. Even assuming a low 30,000 units for 1992, 15,000 for 1993 and 7,500 per year until 1998, that's 707,000 units. Then you have 20 more years of catalog sales at 2,000 units per year - it was still moving 20k/year in 2004 in the US and the UK is a much better market for catalog sales.
BTW, you say "can't be at 750k", I suppose you refer to the album being "only" 1xP. The automatic process of certifications accounts only for sales since 1994. It wasn't certified at the time that's true, but it is irrelevant as it is a Geffen album. They never cared certifying their catalog albums. Even their golden act, Nirvana, is ignored. Nevermind remained 2xP while it was over 2 million, In Utero was still barely Gold until the automatic process, and the Unplugged was barely Platinum. They all sold way more. Same for Appetite For Destruction by Guns N Roses, also a 2 million seller that remains 2xP since 1989. The list goes on and on, Geffen never certified albums after their first 18 months or so.
Oh and German sales are definitely not as low as you expect 😉 you need to consider it was a bigger market than the UK in 1987-1992. Top 20 albms with 20-ish weeks on charts were hitting Gold (250,000) during their promotion campaign, so albums that did close to that and had consistent sales spread over 2 or 3 years sold way, way more than only 100k there!
MJD, you're the man! 🙂
A case that impressed me much about UK sales, was the Emma Bunton's album Life in Mono, which was released near Christmas (December 4), and peaked only 3 weeks there (#65,#75,#79), it sold around 40k in UK, thanks to "Christmas effect". Cher albums, same case... ^^
Hi Mary!
Sorry for the delay in answering, I someway missed your message on first place!
About your two questions:
1) Anthony is the one doing the collection of YouTube streams. He goes after every relevant version of all songs one by one. We do not rely on Vevo / Official accounts which indeed miss many videos / views. That's why there is numbers for nearly every song, even those with 1,000 views. If there is misspellings, some videos can be missed or end inside the Orphan section as a couple of examples you pointed out, although numbers are so low that they don't change the rounded figure at the nearest 1,000.
2) The big hits always lead the pack thanks to playlists. A lot of Spotify users do not search for tunes specifically, nor they go to artist pages, instead they use playlists, for example "best of the 90s" or whatever. This is how Believe is so much ahead of the rest. Then there is best of albums. The casual 'fan' that does go to Cher's page will still tend to play a greatest hits rather than a studio album. Some artists released way less songs than Cher and need to put album tracks into best of albums, they will tend to follow a higher pattern than album tracks from the same studio album but not inside a best of.
About songs from the Sonny & Cher album Baby Don't Go indeed they were sang by other artists, I forgot to put them in yellow as we do in such cases, here too they combine for much less than 1,000 sales which is why I overlooked it!
You are correct about Live songs, they go into Orphan tracks. The aim is really to identify how many sales overall were generated from an era. A song an artist covers live is similar to a new song on a best of album, they are out of the standard process of album's eras. All those tracks fell into 'Orphan'. I also put non-traditional releases with near 0 sales, I do that for example for debut albums on independent labels (Katy Perry or Eminem had such releases), because they do not represent the real discography of the artist that we know. The Soundtrack Chastity fells into that category of 'non-valid' eras, just like Not.com.mercial.
Indeed the singles you mention haven't chart, I got nothing about them! Even at discogs there is more Promo singles than anything, so really not sure what they sold. Luckily they don't change the whole picture!
Thank you for answering me MJD, I didn't know that sales were that high in 1995! In terms of the 1987 Cher album, it was only released in the UK in January 1988, so maybe the 200k should be a little lower then.
Also, you have IICTBT: Chers Greatest Hits at 1.2 million in the US but the last update from Billboard was about 955k, so why the big difference?
In terms of Australian sales, I have a contact from Aria who has answered many questions for me about Chers sales and I know that the Greatest Hits 1965-1992 album is only at 25,000 copies, The Greatest Hits (1999) is past 210,000 and the 1987 Cher album is only Gold.
Thanks!
Hi Stephen!
Cher (the 1987 album), charted from 1988, it was released in 1987. You can see its release date on BPI site. I Found Someone was released in November too, it peaked in early 1988 pushing the album on charts. Cher was clearly just under the Top 100 during late 87, most likely selling 30k even before charting, which is why it went Silver / Gold early in 1988.
IICTBT was on 955k back in 2011, I'm sure you know we are in 2017 😉 by then it was still selling 15k/year. Then it is a 1999 package when Clubs were good for the last time. As already mentioned, Soundscan =/= comprehensive sales.
About Australia, ARIA aren't aware of up to date shipments. All their figures are based on scanned units while charting only, which is why a tally for a best of that charted a few weeks only is irrelevant. As for certifications, I do have all Australian certs on Excel already from 1990 to date. The album "Cher" is not certified, GH (1999) is 2xP.
Hi MJD,
I didn't know it was released in 1987 so thanks for that. Certifications for albums in Australia are based on shipments and Greatest Hits 1965-1992 has only shipped 25k. Aria don't track sales for older albums but they know the shipments. Cher is certified as Gold in Australia and Greatest Hits 1999 is at 3x Platinum. You can see the certification for the Greatest Hits album here:
http://www.aria.com.au/pages/aria-charts-accreditations-albums-2000.htm
MJD, can you please do a similar post about Spice Girls and Avril Lavigne?
"WTF is MDNA?"
An album that has sold more than 94% of all of your albums, Cher
what does her academy award have to do with her MUSIC career and with the fact that 96% of her albums were huge flops?
I don't see why "Burlesque" should be considered a Cher album when she only has 1 and a half song on it, it's obviously a Christina record. Actually that was the reason the Grammy didn't consider Cher when the Burlesque soundtrack was nominated for Best Compilation Soundtrack. It's all about Christina. If you don't agree, you can check the streaming. Christina's songs are much bigger than Cher's.
