Rock is dead. We've heard this sentence for decades. Don McLean famously regarded 2/3/1959 as the day the music died after the tragic passing of Buddy Holly. Many claim the Woodstock wheel was broken by the poor output of 1974. Others consider that 1991 was the last breath of the genre. From Coldplay to Linkin Park to Nickelback to Green Day, various bands proved kind of recently that rock can still attract the masses. The last group to illustrate this is no other than Imagine Dragons.

Obviously, purists will argue that creativity-wise the band doesn't bring much. Commercial success and critical acclaim are two distinct things though. Since the release of the single It's Time, Imagine Dragons has been at the top of the game.

Both Radioactive and Demons made their first era, Night Visions, a blockbuster. One question of today's review is the ranking of that album for the year 2012. So far, out of every artist that has been analyzed, the top performer is Unorthodox Jukebox by Bruno Mars with 13,829,000 units sold through all formats combined. Will Night Visions top it?

Another question is about the band's position among the biggest rock groups of the decade. Are they currently bigger than Coldplay or is that still too much to ask?

In fact, the last 18 months have been massive for the band. Singles of their third album Evolve have been strongly successful. Their new song Natural is gaining strength quickly and a new song is announced for tomorrow. How much can they continue to smash?

Original Albums Sales

Night Visions (2012)

• America

  • US - 2,900,000
  • Canada - 370,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 55,000
  • Mexico - 135,000

• Asia - 135,000

  • Japan - 50,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 135,000
  • New Zealand - 25,000

• Europe - 1,300,000

  • UK - 510,000
  • France - 210,000
  • Germany - 240,000
  • Italy - 40,000
  • Spain - 22,500
  • Sweden - 5,000
  • Netherlands - 45,000
  • Switzerland - 40,000
  • Austria - 32,500
  • Finland - N/A

• World - 5,170,000

Smoke + Mirrors (2015)

• America

  • US - 680,000
  • Canada - 100,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 35,000
  • Mexico - 45,000

• Asia - 65,000

  • Japan - 15,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 30,000
  • New Zealand - 5,000

• Europe - 380,000

  • UK - 135,000
  • France - 70,000
  • Germany - 75,000
  • Italy - 17,500
  • Spain - 15,000
  • Sweden - 1,000
  • Netherlands - 7,500
  • Switzerland - 10,000
  • Austria - 7,500
  • Finland - N/A

• World - 1,390,000

Evolve (2017)

• America

  • US - 700,000
  • Canada - 80,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 10,000
  • Mexico - 35,000

• Asia - 60,000

  • Japan - 10,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 30,000
  • New Zealand - 5,000

• Europe - 450,000

  • UK - 80,000
  • France - 100,000
  • Germany - 120,000
  • Italy - 35,000
  • Spain - 17,500
  • Sweden - 2,000
  • Netherlands - 15,000
  • Switzerland -  15,000
  • Austria - 12,500
  • Finland - N/A

• World - 1,400,000

Original Album Sales - Comments

2012 Night Visions - 5,170,000
2015 Smoke + Mirrors - 1,390,000
2017 Evolve - 1,400,000

Nearly 8 million albums sold after 3 albums. While it's not record breaking, these numbers are definitely solid for this day and age. The highest pure seller from 2012 is Taylor Swift's Red at just 7 million, putting Night Visions not too far from the top albums.

The drop in sales with Smoke + Mirrors was kind of big but Evolve perfectly stopped the fall of their popularity. Since pure sales are less and less relevant, it's needed to check their impact through remaining formats before painting conclusions though.

Physical Singles Sales

Considering the band arrived when the physical singles format was already dead, Imagine Dragons sold near nothing there with no one collecting these records. Indeed, these records barely exist since most of their singles were never issued in CD.

After residual sales by Hear Me in the UK they dropped a mere 4 songs in physical formats, all of them in Germany, Switzerland and Austria only. They are Radioactive, I Bet My Life, Whatever It Takes and Thunder. Combined, they sold an estimated 30,000 units with the largest part coming from the former title.

Digital Singles Sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

Imagine Dragons exploded after the collapse of ringtones, they also failed to sell large quantities in South Korea in their first years. Streaming was also getting strong in 2013/2014 already. While it's much harder to hit huge figures in this context, they still sold monster amounts with their early successes.

The most impressive single is Radioactive, a 12 million sales song, nearly 70% of which come from the US. Demons, It's Time and On Top of the World all did great business too, passing 15 million sales combined.

After such high figures, numbers from the Smoke + Mirrors era look terrible. The band quickly returned to success with Evolve though. With over 7 million sales combined, Believer and Thunder are among the very top selling songs of 2017. Whatever It Takes, although a bit lower, a was strong success too.

Night Visions (2012) - 4,367,000 equivalent albums

Radioactive - 12,100,000
It's Time - 4,820,000
Demons - 7,040,000
On Top of the World - 3,460,000
Remaining tracks - 1,690,000

Smoke + Mirrors (2015) - 702,000 equivalent albums

Shots - 580,000
Gold - 330,000
I Bet My Life - 1,510,000
Warriors - 1,060,000
Battle Cry - 240,000
Monster - 300,000
Who We Are - 180,000
Remaining tracks - 480,000

Evolve (2017) - 1,326,000 equivalent albums

Whatever It Takes - 1,380,000
Believer - 3,350,000
Thunder - 3,730,000
Remaining tracks - 380,000

Orphan - 417,000 equivalent albums

Sucker For Pain - 1,490,000
Roots - 260,000
Born to Be Yours - 160,000
Natural - 310,000
Remaining tracks - 560,000

Streaming Sales

Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 157 million of the 272 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:

Audio Stream - 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream - 11,750 views equal 1 album unit

Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = 272/157 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750

Part 1

EAS of nearly 3,5 million units from streams is immense for any album, even recent ones that enjoyed the boost of the format. To register that figure with an album released in 2012 is thus absolutely insane. No other pre-2014 era came even close to 3 million, not even Adele's 21.

This total is made possible by two bigger than life songs, Radioactive and Demons. With monster numbers from both Spotify and YouTube, they add for nearly 2 million EAS together. If it wasn't for these two songs, On Top of the World and It's Time, around 400,000 EAS each, would look like monsters too. In all fairness, the entire album performs incredibly well. The album cut Bleeding Out is well over 100 million on Spotify and 9 more tracks are over 30 million.

Surprisingly, I Bet My Life comes only third among Smoke + Mirrors' tracks. The relation to League of Legends provided a consistent source of exposure to Warriors while Shots has been gaining popularity through the years. In total the album adds for 1,8 million EAS from streams, a figure fairly healthy considering its relative poor reception at first.

Part 2

Both Believer and Thunder are on their way to hit 1 billion streams on both Spotify and YouTube. They already topped 1 million EAS each. With the success of Whatever It Takes and the consistency of its album tracks, the album reaches 3 million EAS with ease. It may top Night Visions soon.

The orphan section remained fairly empty of relevant tracks for long but things are changing. Sucker For Pain became a true hit off the radar, Born to Be Yours is doing well and Natural is exploding at the moment. With new participations into soundtracks announced for upcoming months, the 1,2 million EAS obtained from orphan songs may grow at fast pace from now.

Full Length related record Sales

It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era - studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams - to get the full picture of an album's popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.

All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.

How to understand this table? If you check this example, these figures mean Continued Silence EP sold 170,000 units worldwide. Then, the second statistics column means streams of all the songs included on this package add for 2,858,117 EAS.

The second part at the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album as well as the share they represent. Thus, streaming figures tell us Night Visions songs are responsible for 100% of the Continued Silence EP tracklist attractiveness. In other words, it generated all its 170,000 album sales. Eventually, we apply this methodology to all compilations.

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America

  • US - 4,405,000
  • Canada - 550,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 100,000
  • Mexico - 215,000

• Asia - 260,000

  • Japan - 75,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 195,000
  • New Zealand - 35,000

• Europe - 2,150,000

  • UK - 745,000
  • France - 380,000
  • Germany - 435,000
  • Italy - 92,500
  • Spain - 55,000
  • Sweden - 7,500
  • Netherlands - 67,500
  • Switzerland - 65,000
  • Austria - 52,500
  • Finland - N/A

• World - 8,190,000

IMAGINE DRAGONS CAREER CSPC RESULTS

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by Imagine Dragons achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

Conclusions

A huge performer on pure sales, singles downloads and streaming, Night Visions closes on 13,37 million EAS from all formats. That puts it ahead of albums like Red by Taylor Swift, Take Me Home by One Direction and Born to Die by Lana Del Rey. It falls short of Bruno Mars' Unorthodox Jukebox by only half a million units for the top spot of the year 2012.

While nowhere near as strong, Smoke + Mirrors isn't that weak after all. It is on its way to reach 4 million EAS which is highly respectable. Evolve is already a pair of millions higher and continues to climb very fast. At almost 6 million, Ed Sheeran's Divide and Taylor Swift's reputation are the only bigger albums from 2017.

Up to 24,72 million equivalent album sales to date, Imagine Dragons are much more than a one-album wonder. Their entire catalog continues to perform very well, they have ongoing hits and new songs coming, creating the perfect context to rocket their sales to much higher levels in the near future.

To go deeper...

Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we know that their sales represent 14,44 million times the purchase of their discography. Coupled with her total sales, it translates into an ASR score of 107. They are just under the Foo Fighters.

Additionally, the following sections list their most successful songs as well as their records and achievements.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs, Chartmasters.org.

Bonuses

IMAGINE DRAGONS' BIGGEST TRACKS

The list is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each song. Therefore, these figures are not merged units of singles formats. Instead, it includes weighted sales of the song's physical single, download, ringtone and streaming as well as its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.

1. 2012 - Imagine Dragons - Radioactive [Night Visions] - 4,670,000
2. 2012 - Imagine Dragons - Demons [Night Visions] - 3,390,000
3. 2017 - Imagine Dragons - Thunder [Evolve] - 2,100,000
4. 2017 - Imagine Dragons - Believer [Evolve] - 1,950,000
5. 2011 - Imagine Dragons - It's Time [Night Visions] - 1,670,000
6. 2012 - Imagine Dragons - On Top of the World [Night Visions] - 1,600,000
7. 2016 - Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Imagine Dragons, Logic & Ty Dolla ft. X Ambassadors - Sucker For Pain [Orphan] - 910,000
8. 2017 - Imagine Dragons - Whatever It Takes [Evolve] - 810,000

If you feel inspired by this list, we just created this CSPC Imagine Dragons playlist on Spotify!

RECORDS & ACHIEVEMENTS

• At 13,365,000 EAS, Night Visions is the 2nd most successful album from 2012.
• At 5,863,000 EAS, Evolve is the 3rd most successful album from 2017.
• At 3,478,000 EAS from streams, Night Visions is the most successful streaming album released before 2014.
• At 3,478,000 EAS from streams, Night Visions is the 2nd most successful streaming album by a group.
• At 3,131,000 EAS from streams, Evolve is the 3rd most successful streaming album by a group.
• At 4,670,000 EAS, Radioactive is among the Top 3 most successful songs of 2012.
• At 8,390,000 units, Radioactive is the 3rd most downloaded song ever in the US.
• At 8 million SPS units, Imagine Dragons is the highest selling single artist ever in the UK that never made the Top 10.

NB: EAS means Equivalent Album Sales.

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